John Glenn: podcast appearances and interviews

John Herschel Glenn Jr. was an American Marine Corps aviator, astronaut, businessman, and politician. He was the third American in space and the first to orbit the Earth, completing three orbits in 1962. Before his NASA career, Glenn served as a fighter pilot in World War II, the Chinese Civil War, and the Korean War, achieving recognition for shooting down three MiG-15s and earning six Distinguished Flying Crosses along with eighteen Air Medals. In 1957, he made the first supersonic transcontinental flight across the United States, capturing the first continuous panoramic photograph of the country on board. As one of the Mercury Seven military test pilots selected by NASA in 1959, Glenn became a pioneering figure in space exploration. His historic Friendship 7 mission marked him as the first American to orbit the Earth, making him the third person overall to do so. His contributions earned him numerous awards, including the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, and induction into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame. Glenn left NASA in 1964 and transitioned into a political career, serving as a Democratic U.S. senator from Ohio from 1974 to 1999. In 1998, at the age of 77, he flew on the Space Shuttle Discovery's STS-95 mission, becoming the oldest person to orbit Earth and the only individual to fly in both the Mercury and Space Shuttle programs. Glenn passed away in 2016 at the age of 95.