John Glenn orbits the Earth
On this day · 20 February 1962
America finally caught up in the space race when a Marine pilot circled the planet three times and brought himself home by hand.
On February 20, 1962, astronaut John H. Glenn lifted off from Cape Canaveral aboard Friendship 7, becoming the first American to orbit the Earth. Some 100,000 spectators watched from the ground and millions more on live television as the bell-shaped capsule reached orbit at about 17,500 miles per hour, roughly 160 miles up.
The flight nearly went wrong. Glenn’s automatic control system began misfiring, so he flew much of the mission by hand. Then mission control received a signal suggesting his heat shield might be loose, threatening to incinerate the capsule on reentry. Controllers had him keep his spent retrorockets strapped on for the descent.
After a tense radio blackout, Glenn’s voice crackled back through the loudspeakers.
Friendship 7 splashed down safely in the Atlantic after three orbits and a flight of 4 hours, 55 minutes, and 23 seconds. The success answered Soviet spaceflight milestones and made Glenn a national hero.
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