"Mercury-Atlas 8 Mercury-Atlas 8 (MA-8) was the fifth United States manned space mission, part of NASA's Mercury program. Astronaut Walter M. Schirra Jr., orbited the Earth six times in the Sigma 7 spacecraft on October 3, 1962, in a nine-hour flight focused mainly on technical evaluation rather than on scientific experimentation. This was the longest U.S. manned orbital flight yet achieved in the Space Race, though well behind the several-day record set by the Soviet Vostok 3 earlier in the year. It confirmed the Mercury spacecraft's durability ahead of the one-day Mercury-Atlas 9 mission that followed in 1963. Planning began"
"flight across the United States. His on-board camera took the first continuous, panoramic photograph of the United States. He was one of the Mercury Seven, military test pilots selected in 1959 by NASA as the nation's first astronauts. On February 20, 1962, Glenn flew the ""Friendship 7"" mission, becoming the first American to orbit the Earth, and the fifth person and third American in space. He received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 1962 and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1990, and was the last surviving member"
"with water. Grissom escapes, but the spacecraft, overweight with seawater, sinks. Many criticize Grissom for possibly panicking and opening the hatch prematurely. Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth on Mercury-Atlas 6 on February 20, 1962, surviving a possibly loose heat shield, and receives a ticker-tape parade. He, his colleagues, and their families become celebrities, including a gigantic celebration in the Sam Houston Coliseum to announce the opening of the Manned Space Center in Houston, despite Glenn's wife Annie's fear of public speaking due to a stutter. Although test pilots at Edwards mock the Mercury program for sending"
"had been suborbital and had lasted only a few minutes. The Soviet missions had both orbited the Earth, and the second, Vostok 2, had remained in orbit for a full day. Using the new high-powered Atlas booster, the coming orbital Mercury missions were expected to reduce the gap between the two countries. NASA announced the first two orbital missions at the end of November 1961, shortly after the Mercury-Atlas 5 (MA-5) test flight, which had carried a chimpanzee and twice orbited the Earth. MA-6 was planned as the first orbital flight, with John Glenn as the primary crew and Scott"
"President Kennedy escorted him in a parade at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, where he awarded Glenn with the NASA service medal. The United States launched three more Mercury flights after Glenn's: ""Aurora 7"" on May 24, 1962, duplicated Glenn's three orbits; ""Sigma 7"" on October 3, 1962, six orbits; and ""Faith 7"" on May 15, 1963, 22 orbits (32.4 hours), the maximum capability of the spacecraft. NASA at first intended to launch one more mission, extending the spacecraft's endurance to three days, but since this would not beat the Soviet record, it was decided instead to concentrate on developing"
"recovering him safely on April 12, 1961. The US launched its first Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard on a suborbital flight almost a month later, on May 5. The Soviets launched a second Vostok on a one-day flight on August 6, before the US finally orbited the first American, John Glenn, on February 20, 1962. The United States launched a total of two manned suborbital Mercury capsules and four manned orbital capsules, with the longest flight, Mercury-Atlas 9, making 22 orbits and lasting 32 and one-half hours. Since the Soviets had plenty of lift capability from launch vehicles derived from their"
"Colonel John H. Glenn, USMC, made his successful orbital space flight. ""Goodrich"" went on alert again with the 6th Fleet during 24 October to 20 November 1962 when the Navy responded to President John F. Kennedy's call for a quarantine of Cuba that choked off the flow of military supplies and enforced the American demands for the withdrawal of the Soviet missile experts and equipment. On 22 July 1966 the destroyer got underway from Mayport on her 13th 6th Fleet deployment. She cruised throughout the Mediterranean for five months, unobtrusively patrolling with the 6th Fleet and taking part in combined"
"instruments for testing and designing antennas, had broken ground on a 25-acre facility in Northeast Atlanta, and had 240 employees on the payroll including 40 engineers. Scientific Atlanta helped NASA establish ground stations for communication with astronauts during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo projects. When John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962 on Mercury-Atlas 6, his voice was transmitted and received by radio antennas designed and equipment built by Scientific Atlanta. In the 1970s, Robinson recognized the potential combination of communications satellites and cable television. Ted Turner purchased one of Scientific Atlanta's first satellite systems,"
"1962, ""Barton"" covered the Project Mercury space shot carried out on 18 May in which Colonel John Glenn, USMC, became the first American to orbit the Earth. Late in October, the other units of the Atlantic Fleet and she stood to as support for the warships engaged in the quarantine of Cuba called for by President John F. Kennedy in response to the siting of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. ""Barton"" rehearsed with amphibious units at Onslow Beach, North Carolina, and stood by, ready for immediate action. The ship returned to Norfolk when the crisis ended. At the end of"
"Lt. Col. John H. Glenn Jr. becoming the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962 (Major Yuri A. Gagarin, a Soviet cosmonaut, was the first human in orbit in 1961.) Atlas was also used throughout the mid-1960s to launch the Agena Target Vehicles used during the Gemini program. Direct Atlas descendants were continued to be used as satellite launch vehicles into the 21st century. An Atlas rocket is shown exploding, in the 1983 art film ""Koyaanisqatsi"", directed by Godfrey Reggio, in the penultimate shot. The vehicle shown in the movie was the first launch attempt of an Atlas-Centaur in"
"in his decision to become an astronaut was the Mercury Atlas 6 flight of John Glenn on February 20, 1962, and the thought of being able to circle the Earth in 90 minutes. He applied for the second group of astronauts that year. To raise the numbers of Air Force pilots selected, the Air Force sent their best applicants to a ""charm school"". Medical and psychiatric examinations at Brooks Air Force Base, Texas, and interviews at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas, followed. In mid-September he found out he had not been accepted. It was a blow even though"
"named ""Delta 7""), Carpenter was assigned to replace him. He flew into space on May 24, 1962, atop the Mercury-Atlas 7 rocket for a three-orbit science mission that lasted nearly five hours. His ""Aurora 7"" spacecraft attained a maximum altitude of and an orbital velocity of . Carpenter performed five onboard experiments per the flight plan, and became the first American astronaut to eat solid food in space. He also identified the mysterious ""fireflies"" observed by Glenn during ""Friendship 7"" as particles of frozen liquid loosened from the outside of the spacecraft, which he could produce by rapping on the"
"million. Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States. It ran from 1959 through 1963 with the goal of putting a human in orbit around the Earth. The Mercury-Atlas 6 flight on February 20, 1962, was the first Mercury flight to achieve this goal. The Post Office Department honored this first orbital flight of a United States astronaut on February 20, 1962, when it released the Project Mercury commemorative stamp, placed on sale throughout the country at the exact hour Colonel John Glenn's historic flight officially had returned to Earth safely. The stamp features an image"
"flight director during all six of the manned Mercury missions. Only during the final flight—Mercury-Atlas 9, which lasted for over a day—did he share responsibility with his deputy John Hodge. Mercury-Atlas 6, the flight of John Glenn, proved to be a testing experience both for Mission Control and for Kraft. One book on the history of the Apollo program calls it ""the single event that decisively shaped Flight Operations."" The mission, the first orbital flight by an American, unfolded normally until Glenn began his second orbit. At that point Kraft's systems controller, Don Arabian, reported that telemetry was showing a"
"T. J. O'Malley Thomas Joseph O'Malley (October 15, 1915 – November 6, 2009), better known as T. J. O'Malley, was an Irish-American aerospace engineer who, as chief test conductor for the Convair division of General Dynamics, was responsible for pushing the button on February 20, 1962 launching the Mercury-Atlas 6 space flight carrying astronaut John Glenn, the first American in orbit. Five years later, NASA asked North American Aviation to hire him as director of launch operations to help get the Apollo program back on track after the Apollo 1 command module fire on the launch pad killed three astronauts."
"first person in space on an orbital flight. Alan Shepard became the first American in space on a suborbital flight three weeks later, on May 5, 1961. John Glenn, the third Mercury astronaut to fly, became the first American to reach orbit on February 20, 1962, but only after the Soviets had launched a second cosmonaut, Gherman Titov, into a day-long flight in August 1961. Three more Mercury orbital flights were made, ending on May 16, 1963 with a day-long, 22 orbit flight. However, the Soviet Union ended its Vostok program the next month, with the human spaceflight endurance record"
"13, ""Friendship 7"", and had the name hand-painted on the side like the one on his F-86 had been. Glenn and Carpenter completed their training for the mission in January 1962, but postponement of the launch allowed them to continue rehearsing. Glenn spent 25 hours and 25 minutes in the spacecraft performing hangar and altitude tests, and 59 hours and 45 minutes in the simulator. He flew 70 simulated missions and reacted to 189 simulated system failures. After a long series of delays, ""Friendship 7"" lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on February 20, 1962. There were eleven"
"Mercury astronaut John Glenn, who was 77 at the time, flew with ""Discovery"" on STS-95 in 1998, making him the oldest person to go into space. Had plans to launch United States Department of Defense payloads from Vandenberg Air Force Base gone ahead, ""Discovery"" would have become the dedicated US Air Force shuttle. Its first West Coast mission, STS-62-A, was scheduled for 1986, but canceled in the aftermath of ""Challenger"". ""Discovery"" was retired after completing its final mission, STS 133 on March 9, 2011. The spacecraft is now on display in Virginia at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, an annex"
"World News Roundup"" Late Edition) from 1988 to 1999, and the morning ""CBS World News Roundup"" from 1999 until his retirement. Glenn's final morning broadcast occurred on February 23, 2006. From 1982 to 1984, Glenn served as a television news anchor on ""CBS News Nightwatch"", which aired from 2-6 a.m. weekdays. Glenn made his best-known report on January 28, 1986, when he anchored CBS Radio's live coverage of the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Glenn had just signed off—after what was thought to have been a normal launch—when the shuttle disintegrated, killing the seven astronauts on board. ""I had"
"Unlike Gagarin, Shepard manually controlled his spacecraft's attitude, and landed inside it. The first American in orbit was John Glenn aboard ""Friendship 7"", launched 20 February 1962 on a Mercury-Atlas rocket. The USSR launched five more cosmonauts in Vostok capsules, including the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova aboard Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963. The US launched a total of two astronauts in suborbital flight and four into orbit through 1963. US President John F. Kennedy raised the stakes of the Space Race by setting the goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely by"
"mercy missions to Santiago, Chile in May 1960, when an earthquake literally re-made parts of that country; in 1962, the four month round the world tour of John Glenn’s space capsule Friendship 7 ; many re-supply missions from Thule Air Base, Greenland to the northern most weather outposts at Nord, Greenland and Alert, both within just some 500 miles of the North Pole; the delivery of a telespectrograph to Ascension Island in support of the space project FIRE. It was the first time such an instrument was airlifted as a complete unit; the airlift of supplies and emergency equipment to"
"Carpenter as his backup. The follow-up mission, MA-7 was to be crewed by Deke Slayton, with Wally Schirra as his backup. In February 1962, the first draft planning began for MA-8, the third orbital mission, with a goal of ""six or seven"" orbits, as an intermediate step towards a day-long 18-orbit flight. The decision to move to six orbits rather than seven was driven by the mission rules on contingency recovery operations; a seventh orbit would have required significant additional recovery forces to be able to reach the capsule anywhere on its trajectory within eighteen hours. The six-orbit profile had"
"more than a decade the destroyer continued her already established peacetime operation pattern. Highlights of this exacting duty included participation as a recovery station ship in the 1961 and 1962 Project Mercury flights, and in the search for the lost nuclear powered submarine . In August 1961 ""Glennon"" was called away suddenly to join the task force for the Project Mercury space shot carrying Major Gus Grissom. In early 1962 she was again chosen to man an Atlantic recovery station for the historic three-orbit flight of Major John Glenn. An extensive overhaul at Boston terminated on 24 July 1963, and"
"Ian Brown. The record made the UK Top 5 Singles Chart in January 1998. T. J. O'Malley Thomas Joseph O'Malley (October 15, 1915 – November 6, 2009), better known as T. J. O'Malley, was an Irish-American aerospace engineer who, as chief test conductor for the Convair division of General Dynamics, was responsible for pushing the button on February 20, 1962 launching the Mercury-Atlas 6 space flight carrying astronaut John Glenn, the first American in orbit. Five years later, NASA asked North American Aviation to hire him as director of launch operations to help get the Apollo program back on track"
"April 1961. The spacecraft completed one orbit around the globe, lasting about 1 hour and 48 minutes. Gagarin's flight resonated around the world; it was a demonstration of the advanced Soviet space program and it opened an entirely new era in space exploration: human spaceflight. The U.S. first launched a person into space within a month of ""Vostok 1"" with Alan Shepard's suborbital flight on Freedom 7. Orbital flight was achieved by the United States when John Glenn's Friendship 7 orbited Earth on 20 February 1962. Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, orbited Earth 48 times aboard ""Vostok 6"""
"shuttle astronaut Charles Bolden, who wrote: ""John Glenn's legacy is one of risk and accomplishment, of history created and duty to country carried out under great pressure with the whole world watching."" President Obama ordered flags to be flown at half-mast until Glenn's burial. On April 5, 2017, President Donald Trump issued presidential proclamation , titled ""Honoring the Memory of John Glenn"". Glenn was awarded the John J. Montgomery Award in 1963. Glenn received National Geographic Society's Hubbard Medal in 1962. Glenn, along with 37 other space race astronauts, received the Ambassador of Space Exploration Award in 2006. He was"
"USS ""Stormes"" (DD-780) in the late afternoon and Enos was immediately taken below deck by his Air Force handlers. The ""Stormes"" arrived in Bermuda the next day. Enos's flight was a full dress rehearsal for the next Mercury launch on February 20, 1962, which would make John Glenn the first American to orbit Earth, after astronauts Alan Shepard, Jr. and Gus Grissom's successful suborbital space flights. On November 4, 1962, Enos died of shigellosis-related dysentery, which was resistant to then-known antibiotics. He was constantly observed for two months before his death. Pathologists reported no symptoms that could be attributed or"
"make [Glenn's] mission come to fruition. But I understand you can't make a movie with 300 characters. It is simply not possible. John Glenn's flight was not terminated early as incorrectly stated in the movie's closing subtitles. The MA-6 mission was planned for three orbits and landed at the expected time. The press kit published before launch states that ""The Mercury Operations Director may elect a one, two or three orbit mission."" The post mission report also shows that retrofire was scheduled to occur on the third orbit. The Mercury Control Center was located at Cape Canaveral, Florida, not at"
"of the Mercury Seven. Glenn resigned from NASA in January 1964. He planned to run for a U.S. Senate seat from Ohio, but an injury in February 1964 forced his withdrawal. He retired from the Marine Corps the following year. He lost a close primary election in 1970. A member of the Democratic Party, Glenn first won election to the Senate in 1974 and served for 24 years until January 1999. In 1998, while still a sitting Senator, Glenn flew on the ""Discovery"" space shuttle's STS-95 mission, and became the oldest person to fly in space and the only person"
"nutrition."" One of John Glenn's many tasks, as the first American to orbit Earth in 1962, was to experiment with eating in weightless conditions. Some experts had been concerned that weightlessness would impair swallowing. Glenn experienced no difficulties and it was determined that microgravity did not affect the natural swallowing process, which is enabled by the peristalsis of the esophagus. Astronauts in later Mercury missions (1959–1963) disliked the food that was provided. They ate bite-sized cubes, freeze-dried powders, and tubes of semiliquids. The astronauts found it unappetizing, experienced difficulties in rehydrating the freeze-dried foods, and did not like having to"
"(1983), STS-51-F/Spacelab-2 (1985), STS-33 (1989), STS-44 (1991), and STS-80 (1996); and the Payload Commander on STS-61 (1993). A veteran of six space flights, Musgrave has spent a total of 1,281 hours, 59 minutes, 22 seconds on space missions, including nearly 27 hours of EVA. Musgrave is the only astronaut to have flown on all five Space Shuttles. Prior to John Glenn's return to space in 1998, Musgrave held the record for the oldest person in orbit, at age 61. He retired from NASA in 1997. He first flew on STS-6, which launched from the Kennedy Space Center, on April 4,"
"taken aboard . The event was named an IEEE Milestone in 2011. After the successful completion of the Mercury 5 flight that carried Enos, a chimpanzee, in late November 1961, a press conference was held in early December. Reporters asked NASA's Robert Gilruth who would be the first U.S. astronaut in orbit, piloting Mercury 6. He then announced the team members for the next two Mercury missions. John H. Glenn was selected as prime pilot for the first mission (Mercury 6), with M. Scott Carpenter as his backup. Donald K. Slayton and Walter M. Schirra were pilot and backup, respectively,"
"full capabilities of the nuclear powered super carrier. On 20 February 1962, ""Enterprise"" was a tracking and measuring station for the flight of ""Friendship 7"", the Project Mercury space capsule in which Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr. made the first American orbital spaceflight. In August, the carrier joined the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea, returning to Norfolk, Virginia in October. In October 1962, ""Enterprise"" was dispatched to her first international crisis. Following revelations that the Soviet Union was constructing nuclear missile launch sites on Cuba, President John F. Kennedy ordered the United States Department of Defense to conduct"