Twenty years ago, on October 29, 1998, the first American to orbit the Earth became the oldest human being ever to fly in space. John Glenn is the man who holds these records. A.S.Ganesh throws light on his double distinctions.

John Glenn, born at Ohio on July 18, 1921, is a national hero in the United States of America and it isn’t just because of the feats he achieved in space, which are phenomenal on their own. Glenn was a decorated pilot before he turned into an astronaut, flying over 150 missions across the World War II and the Korean War.

And as if that weren’t enough, he also flew the first nonstop supersonic flight across the U.S. in July 1957. Nearly 10 years after Chuck Yeager had broken the sound barrier, Glenn got from Los Angeles to New York in a time of 3 hours and 23 minutes on his F-8U Crusader, averaging more than the speed of sound through the transcontinental flight.

All these accumulated flying hours meant that when the “Mercury Seven” – the U.S. military pilots who were to be the first astronauts – were chosen in 1959, Glenn was one of them. Perhaps fate always had plans for Glenn to be the oldest human in space, for there was an indication right at the start – he was the oldest among those selected.

First American to orbit the Earth

Before his first claim to fame, Glenn served as a backup pilot for both Alan Shepherd, the first American in space, and Virgil Grissom – both of whom had made suborbital flights. Glenn was chosen to become the first American to be part of an orbital flight.

He did this on February 20, 1962 aboard the Friendship 7 capsule. Launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, his 4 hours 55 minutes flight in the spacecraft took him on three orbits around the Earth, before eventually landing in the Atlantic Ocean near the Grand Turk island in the Turks and Caicos Islands, located in the Lucayan or Bahama archipelago.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing though as the spacecraft’s heat shield had been loose and the automatic system failed after the first orbit. Glenn had assumed manual control during the second and third orbits and also for the re-entry.

The years in between

Glenn became a national hero immediately and NASA were forced to ground him after the historic flight, as they couldn’t afford to risk the life of an astronaut who had captured the popular imagination. The lack of activity pushed Glenn into politics and despite two initial setbacks – he withdrew his Senate bid in 1964 after seriously injuring his inner ear after a fall and lost narrowly in 1970 – he was elected as Ohio’s Senator in 1974. He was re-elected three more times and served as the Senator of Ohio from 1974 to 1999.

Back to space, 36 years later

While still serving as the Senator of Ohio, 77-year-old Glenn was commissioned to be the payload specialist on STS-95 mission aboard the space shuttle Discovery. This nine-day mission, launched on October 29, 1998, performed a wide range of research, including deployment of the Spartan Solar Observing Spacecraft and the orbital systems test platform of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Glenn, who thus became the oldest person till date in space, was aboard to aid the microgravity experiments that were planned. Scientists had drawn parallels between the natural changes as a person ages and the effects of spaceflight on the human body. Glenn’s experiments were designed in such a way that they recorded his responses to microgravity and furthered investigations on the aging process.

Glenn spent 213 hours and 44 minutes in space during this trip, orbiting the Earth 134 times. The re-entry and landing was also far less dramatic than on his previous occasion as the Discovery eased through and landed safely at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Till his death on December 8, 2016, Glenn loved to meet people, even after his public life, and he took to school children in particular with great zeal.