He lifted off from Cape Canaveral and splashed down 4 hours 55 minutes minutes later, 800 miles southeast of Cape Canaveral near Grand Turk Island.

Glenn's mission made him a national hero and the United States as a technology leader in the space race. This embroidered patch commemorates the career of a man of remarkable ability and courage.

John Herschel Glenn, Jr., a Marine Lt. Colonel was selected as part of the first group of American Astronauts which became known as the Mercury 7.

John Glenn was born on July 18, 1921, in Cambridge, Ohio. He grew up in New Concord, Ohio, where he attended school and graduated from New Concord High School. He then enrolled in New Concord's Muskingum College where he received a B.S. in engineering. He had already learned to fly at the small New Philadelphia airfield through a government civilian pilot training program.

He volunteered for the Naval Aviation Cadet Program won his wings and lieutenant's bars in 1943.

Glenn joined Marine Fighter Squadron 155 and spent a year flying the F4U Corsair in the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific. During his World War II service Glenn flew 59 combat missions and then returned home to help train other pilots and do some test-pilot work at Patuxent River, Maryland.

When the Korean conflict began, Glenn requested combat duty. He flew F9F Panther jets on 63 ground-support missions. Later, he was assigned as an exchange pilot with the Air Force in F-86 Sabrejets. In combat duty during the last nine days of fighting in Korea, Glenn shot down three MiGs along the Yalu River.

In July 1957, while project officer of the F8U Crusader, he made the first transcontinental flight to average supersonic speeds.

As part of his military duties was also involved in the design the Mercury capsule for NASA. The Manned Space Program began in 1958 with Project Mercury. After an intensive screening, Glenn was selected as a Mercury astronaut.

Each of the astronauts were assigned a different portion of the project. Glenn specialized in the instrument panel layout, cockpit design and control functioning, including some of the early designs for Project Apollo.

Glenn served as backup pilot for Astronauts Shepard and Grissom who made sub-orbital flight.

After eleven delays, due to equipment malfunctions and weather, he launched from Cape Canaveral and made America's first orbital flight on February 20,1962, piloting the Mercury-Atlas 6 Friendship 7 spacecraft.

When the automatic control system stopped funcitoning, he went to manual control and continued in that mode during the second and third orbits and during re-entry. A signal to the ground via telemetry indicated that spacecraft, had a loose heat shield. To make sure it was secured during re-entry, the retropack was kept in place to steady the shield. During re-entry, large portions of the burning retropack flew by the window.

His flight lasted 4 hours 55 minutes, reading a maximum altitude of 162 and an orbital velocity of 17,500 miles per hour. He landed 41 miles west and 19 miles north of the planned landing target.

Glenn returned to a tremendous hero's welcome. President John F. Kennedy flew to Cape Canaveral to meet him. Glenn took his wife and children up to the capsule which had been brought back to the Cape and showed them how well it had sustained the flight.

Since it was unlikely that Glenn would get another space flight, at age 42 he resigned from NASA. After a career in private business, he was elected as United States Senator from Ohio in November 1974 and servered in that position until 1997.

During his Senate career, Glenn had been active in the Committee on Aging. On January 16, 1998, NASA Administrator Dan Goldin announced the appointment of John Glenn as a member of the crew of the Space Shuttle Discovery for mission STS-95, scheduled for October 29, 1998. He served as a payload specialist and a subject for basic research on how weightlessness affects the body of an older person. In this role the first American in orbit became the oldest person to travel in space.