On Feb. 20, 1962, Mercury-Atlas 6 mission launched, sending the Friendship 7 capsule containing John Glenn into orbit. Two Soviets – Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov – had previously orbited Earth, but Glenn was the first American to do so, and his flight proved the competitiveness of the U.S. in the space race.
The flight lasted 4 hours and 55 minutes, making three orbits of the planet, during which he photographed Earth and ate a tube of applesauce to test digestion in space. Though technical challenges forced Glenn to pilot the spacecraft manually for the final two orbits and a faulty sensor suggested that a heat shield was loose, Glenn safely reentered the atmosphere and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean. He was celebrated as a national hero, and would go on to a political career and a return to space decades later, at the age of 77.
