Former astronaut and US Senator John Glenn died Thursday at the age of 95. After his death, NASA led tributes to a man it called “a true American hero”. What makes him so special? A look into the life of a pilot, pioneering astronaut and politician
‘Original Seven’
Glenn was among the first military pilots chosen to be US astronauts in 1959. They were selected for Project Mercury, the first manned spaceflight by the US. In 1962, he became the first American to orbit Earth, a year after Russia’s Yuri Gagarin became the first person to do so
After his 23-year career in the US military and space program, Glenn entered the Senate as a Democrat, and made two unsuccessful tries for the party’s presidential nomination, according to AFP. And at 77, Glenn made history again when he returned to space thus becoming the oldest astronaut
59 combat missions that Glenn flew during World War II. Glenn accumulated 9000 hours of flying time, about 3,000 of it in jets
Braveheart
Although Project Mercury was a huge success, problems that could have led to a disaster were solved by Glenn, says NASA on its website. The first was a failure of the automatic control system. Glenn then flew the capsule manually. The second, the spacecraft’s heat shield became loose during re-entry. He left the retrorocket, and fixed the heat shield. If not, the spacecraft could have been incinerated