John Glenn Jr. - Button

John Herschel Glenn, Jr. (born July 18, 1921) is a retired United States Marine Corps pilot, a former astronaut and United States senator who was the first American and third person to orbit the Earth. Glenn was a Marine Corps fighter pilot before joining NASA's Mercury program as a member of NASA's original astronaut group. He orbited the Earth in Friendship 7 in 1962. After retiring from NASA, he entered politics as a Democrat and represented Ohio in the United States Senate from 1974 to 1999. Glenn received a Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978 and was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1990. In 1998, he became the oldest person to fly in space, and the only one to fly in both the Mercury and Shuttle programs, when at age 77, he flew on the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-95). Glenn and M. Scott Carpenter are the last surviving members of the Mercury Seven.