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 Ohio, were also named for him. Colonel Glenn Road in Little Rock, Arkansas was named for him in 1962. High schools in Westland and Bay City, Michigan; Walkerton, Indiana; San Angelo, Texas, and Norwalk, California bear Glenn's name. The fireboat "John H. Glenn Jr.", operated by the District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department and protecting sections of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers which run through Washington, D.C., was named for him, as was USNS "John Glenn" (T-MLP-2), a mobile landing platform delivered to the U.S. Navy on March 12, 2014. In June 2016, the Port Columbus, Ohio,