John Glenn John Glenn Colonel John Herschel Glenn Jr. (July 18, 1921 – December 8, 2016) was a United States Marine Corps aviator, engineer, astronaut, businessman, and politician. He was the first American to orbit the Earth, circling it three times in 1962. Following his retirement from NASA, he served from 1974 to 1999 as a Democratic United States Senator from Ohio. Before joining NASA, Glenn was a distinguished fighter pilot in World War II, China and Korea. He shot down three MiG-15s, and was awarded six Distinguished Flying Crosses and eighteen Air Medals. In 1957, he made the first supersonic transcontinental
John Glenn research reason. It's got nothing to do with medicine". In a 2012 interview, Glenn said he regretted that NASA did not continue its research on aging by sending additional elderly people into space. After STS-95 returned safely, its crew received a ticker-tape parade. On October 15, 1998, NASA Road 1 (the main route to the Johnson Space Center) was temporarily renamed John Glenn Parkway for several months. Glenn was awarded the NASA Space Flight Medal in 1998 for flying on STS-95. In 2001, Glenn opposed sending Dennis Tito, the world's first space tourist, to the International Space Station because Tito's