JOHNGLEN

GLENN, John Herschel, Jr.

GLENN, John Herschel, Jr. (1921- ), American astronaut and U.S. senator (1974-99). Born in Cambridge, Ohio, on July 18, 1921, Glenn entered Muskingum College, Ohio, in 1939, and left in his junior year to take preflight training in the Naval Aviation Cadet Program. He enlisted in the military in 1943.

As a pilot with the U.S. Marine Corps, he flew 59 combat missions in World War II and another 90 missions during the Korean War. As a test pilot, in 1957 he became the first person to make a nonstop supersonic transcontinental flight, from Los Angeles to New York City, setting a speed record of 3 hr 23 min 8.4 sec. In 1959, he was chosen as one of the first seven U.S. astronauts for the Project Mercury space program. On Feb. 20, 1962, Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth in space, in the Mercury capsule Friendship 7. The three-orbit flight covered approximately 130,000 km (approximately 81,000 mi) in 4 hr 55 min.

Glenn retired from the astronaut program in 1964 and from the Marine Corps in 1965, becoming a business executive and consultant to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). His many awards and honors include the Distinguished Flying Cross (six times) and the Air Medal with 18 clusters.

In 1974 Glenn was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat from Ohio. After winning a second term in 1980, he contended unsuccessfully for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination. Reelected to the Senate in 1986 and 1992, Glenn focused on technical, scientific, and intelligence issues, especially the control of nuclear weapons. He announced early in 1997 that he would not run for a fifth term in 1998.

Between Oct. 29 and Nov. 7, 1998, Glenn fulfilled a longtime ambition when he served as a payload specialist on the space shuttle Discovery , becoming, at age 77, the oldest person ever to fly in space. During the mission, he conducted research on similarities between the effects of space flight and the aging process.