John Glenn was not popular with the other astronauts. Glenn was the backup pilot for Shepard and Grissom on the first two manned Project Mercury flights, the sub-orbital missions Mercury-Redstone 3 and Mercury-Redstone 4. Glenn was selected for Mercury-Atlas 6, NASA's first manned orbital flight, with Carpenter as his backup. Putting a man in orbit would achieve one of Project Mercury's most important goals. Shepard and Grissom had named their spacecraft "Freedom 7" and "Liberty Bell 7". The numeral 7 had originally been the production number of Shepard's spacecraft, but had come to represent the Mercury 7. Glenn named his spacecraft, number
John Glenn public service by an elected or appointed official, one of the annual Jefferson Awards. In 1961, Glenn received an honorary LL.D from Muskingum University, the college he attended before joining the military in World War II. He also received honorary doctorates from Nihon University in Tokyo; Wagner College in Staten Island, New York; Ohio Northern University; Williams College; and Brown University. In 1998 he helped found the John Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy at Ohio State University to encourage public service. The institute merged with OSU's School of Public Policy and Management to become the John Glenn