USA TODAY International Edition
‘ Space race’ celebrates its 50th anniversary
Workers reunite 50 years after historic voyage
John Glenn, left, became the first American to orbit the Earth and put the nation on equal footing with former Soviet Union.
CAPE CANAVERAL — Today is the 50th anniversary of John Glenn’s spaceflight, a historic trip around Earth that declared the U. S. a competitor in the Cold War “Space Race.”
Flying in the Friendship 7 spacecraft, Glenn orbited the globe three times on Feb. 20, 1962, before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean.
“You are the people that made it happen,” Glenn, said in thanking retired NASA Project Mercury workers Saturday night at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “And I’m so glad to see that so many of you are still around.”
Glenn, 90, was joined Saturday by fellow astronaut Scott Carpenter, 86. Carpenter rode Aurora 7 into orbit three months after Glenn’s trip.
They’re the last surviving members of the nation’s first seven Project Mercury astronauts who put the U. S. on equal footing with the Soviet Union.
At the time of Glenn’s flight, the Soviet Union was beating the U. S. in a battle for technological and ideological supremacy. The Soviets shocked the world in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik, the world’s first man- made satellite. In April 1961, Russian Air Force pilot Yuri Gagarin became the first to orbit Earth.
The U. S. launched astronauts Alan Shepard and Virgil “Gus” Grissom in May and July 1961. But they only flew 15- minute suborbital jaunts into space. To worsen matters, Russian Gherman Titov lapped the Earth 17 times in August 1961.
The flights of Glenn and Carpenter — followed by Mercury missions by Wally Schirra and Gordon Cooper — gave the nation a sense it could catch and overtake the Soviet Union in the race to the moon.
“The American psyche became stronger and different because of the success of the Mercury program and the people who were in it,” NASA astronaut Stephen Robinson said.
Robinson flew with Glenn when Glenn returned to space in 1998 at age 77, becoming the oldest human to fly in orbit during a scientific mission aboard Shuttle Discovery. Glenn, who also was a U. S. senator, will be honored today at Ohio State University, where its school of public affairs bears his name.
Despite the retirement of the shuttle program and retrenchment on manned space flight, Carpenter suggested other U. S. heroes may some day replace those of the Mercury program — perhaps to Mars. “We ain’t seen nothing yet,” he said.