Fifty years ago today, John Herschel Glenn, Jr. was launched in a Mercury spacecraft atop an Atlas booster from Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. He became the fifth man in space and the first American to orbit the earth, making three revolutions in four and half hours and splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean. He is the first human to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his launch (the four previous flyers, Gagarin, Shepard, Grissom, and Titov passed away before their respective anniversaries). Celebrations have taken place at Kennedy Space Center, where Glenn ultimately flew on the Space Shuttle, and in his home state of Ohio at the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, renamed in his honor.
What can you do on the Presidents Day holiday to celebrate this anniversary? Here is a list of ideas:
- Visit his spacecraft Friendship 7 at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington D.C.
http://www.nasm.si.edu/events/eventDetail.cfm?eventID=3674 - Not close to D.C.? Find a closer spacecraft in A Field Guide to American Spacecraft
http://web.mac.com/jimgerard/AFGAS/pages/mercury/index.html - NASA's official 50th Anniversary website
http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/glenn50/ - Check out this online retrospective from Ohio State University
http://www.osu.edu/johnglenn/ - Another online tribute from Florida Today
http://www.floridatoday.com/section/SPACE02/50th-Anniversary-John-Glenn-orbits-Earth - Download the free demo of the computer game "A-OK! The Wings of Mercury"
http://www.aokwom.com/download.html
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