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John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, returns to space

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By JEFFREY KLUGER

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THE FIRST TIME JOHN GLENN FLEW INTO space, he made a point of mentioning chewing gum to his wife. Whenever the former combat pilot was preparing for an especially hazardous mission, he and Annie always talked about gum, and Feb. 20, 1962, was no exception. That morning Glenn was perched atop a steaming Atlas missile while Annie waited at home in Arlington, Va., following his doings on a bank of television sets. At just past 8:35, the phone rang. On the line--through a roar of static--Annie could hear John, patched directly from his spaceship to his home. "Well," Glenn said, "I'm going down to the corner store and buy some chewing gum."

"Well," Annie said bravely, as she knew she was supposed to, "don't take too long." An hour later, the spacecraft carrying her husband left the ground. Five hours after that, it splashed down in the Atlantic; when it did, the world turned over.

Last week Glenn flew off to buy one more pack of gum. This time it was not the silvery pencil of an Atlas booster carrying the 77-year-old Senator into space but the great technological temple of a space shuttle. This time he wasn't flying alone but in the company of six multinational crewmates, including the first Japanese woman in space. And this time, he said, he was flying not for glory but for something as simple as geriatric science. Whatever Glenn modestly claimed, however, the public was having none of it.

When he lifted off last Thursday afternoon, climbing aloft on a column of hellfire that made his puny Atlas look like a sparkler, the nation paid attention in a way it hadn't in decades. At least 2,500 journalists crowded Cape Canaveral, Fla.--seven times the number that turned out for Glenn's first flight. Nearly 250,000 spectators darkened the roads and waterways around the cape.

During the eight days and 22 hours the mission is scheduled to run--eight days and 17 hours more than Glenn got last time--the astronauts will be kept busy releasing and retrieving a sun-sensing satellite, testing components for the Hubble Space Telescope, and conducting experiments in an onboard lab.

Then too there are experiments Glenn alone can conduct. Since the changes the body goes through in zero G are so similar to the ones it goes through as it ages, studying a weightless senior citizen is supposed to shed light on both processes. During the mission, Glenn will be more experimental subject than experimenter, as his blood is drawn, his sleep cycles are measured, his balance and heart function are gauged. "We've always flown astronauts between the ages of 30 and 60," says NASA administrator Daniel Goldin. "John Glenn represents a sample beyond our experience domain."

John Glenn and his fellow crew members returned safely to Earth on Nov. 7.

Questions

1. What are the principal differences between John Glenn's first and second trips to space?

2. What did Glenn hope to accomplish on this mission?

Answers

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