John Glenn's historic first orbital spaceflight of Feb. 20, 1962, worried NASA on many levels. ... On Feb. 20, 1962, John Glenn rode the Friendship 7 capsule into space, ...

Jan. 11, 1961: Marine Lt. Col. John Glenn, in a space flight suit, reaches for some of the controls inside a Mercury capsule procedures trainer as he shows how the first U.S. astronaut will ride ...

INSKEEP: That's the countdown as John Glenn sat in a space capsule and was soon the first American to orbit the Earth. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) JOHN GLENN: Oh, that view is tremendous.

Editor's note: John Glenn, a legendary NASA astronaut and American hero, died on Dec. 8, 2016 at age 95. Read our full obituary here. On Feb. 20, 1962, John Glenn rode the Friendship 7 capsule ...

Glenn was so revered that after orbiting Earth three times in 1962, his friend, President John F. Kennedy, quietly told NASA that the nation could not risk sending Glenn back into space again.

John Glenn, who became an ... Glenn first earned broad public attention in 1962 in the bell-shaped space capsule Friendship 7 — a flight that NASA’s mission control worried might burn up upon ...

John Glenn with his Mercury space capsule, Friendship 7, in an undated handout photo. Glenn, who was hailed as a national hero and a symbol of the space age as the first American to orbit Earth ...

Former astronaut and U.S. Senator John Glenn has died at the age of 95. Hank Wilson with the John Glenn School of Public Affairs says Glenn died Thursday afternoon at the James Cancer Hospital in ...

Cody, 70, was a newly enlisted seaman aboard the destroyer USS Noa on Feb. 20, 1962, when astronaut John H. Glenn Jr., strapped inside his tiny Friendship 7 space capsule, floated down and into ...

John Glenn's 2012 interview with FLORIDA TODAY. Space travel then held far more unknowns that it does today. For example, "ophthalmologists were literally concerned at that time that your eyes ...