Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth in space when he piloted Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962, and soon afterward served a very long career in Congress as a senator from Ohio and even ran for president.
In 1958, NASA was formed, and it soon recruited seven astronauts for it's budding space program. Glenn was the last living of the original seven. In 1959, Glenn (far right below) and the other astronauts met with Vice President Nixon and posed for this photo with a model of the Mercury-Atlas rocket/spacecraft designed to deliver the astronauts into space. One of those astronauts, Alan Shepard (second from the right), was the first American in space.
At the age of 77, Glenn returned to space as a payload specialist aboard the space shuttle Discovery.
Glenn died yesterday after a brief illness. At 95, he was removed from his research mission on the South Pole shortly before he died.
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