On February 20, 1962, John Herschel Glenn, Jr. (1921-), became the first American to orbit Earth. Glenn’s historic flight was part of the Mercury program, which was initiated by NASA to send humans into space. Glenn traveled inside a capsule called Friendship 7 for five hours, orbiting our planet three times. He later became a U.S. Senator, representing Ohio; and in 1998, he went back into space again aboard the space shuttle Discovery. 2