On February 20, 1962, Glenn flew the Friendship 7 mission and became the first American to orbit the Earth and the fifth person in space, after cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov and the sub-orbital missions of fellow Mercury Seven astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom.
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Glenn
Here is the original article written by the NY Daily News regarding this feat:
- Cape Canaveral, Fla., Feb. 20 - Lt. Col. John H. Glenn Jr., crying “Boy, that was a real fireball!” today rode his fiery Mercury spacecraft screaming back through the atmosphere in a triumphal climax to his triple orbit of the earth.
The epochal flight put the nation firmly back in the space race with Russia.
The temperature on the Mercury’s skin reached 3,000 degrees as Glenn hurtled down for a perfect landing, slowing from 17,500 m.p.h. to 270 m.p.h. in little more than five minutes. Flaming gases spewed around the spacecraft as its huge plastic heat shield fused in absorbing the heat.
It’s a Gentle Landing
It was presumably the sight of the gases blazing past his porthole that evoked Glenn’s jubilant “fireball” remark.
But the astronaut, who had maintained part-manual control of the space capsule for the last two orbits, dropped gently to a safe parachute landing in the Atlantic 800 miles southeast of this launch site.
Remaining inside the capsule, Glenn was swiftly picked up by the destroyer Noa, a recovery ship on station a scant six miles from the spot where the spacecraft touched down at 2:43 P.M.