COLUMBUS – Former astronaut and U.S. Sen. John Glenn has died at age 95.
Glenn became a national hero in 1962 when he became the first American to orbit the Earth.
Hank Wilson with the John Glenn School of Public Affairs says Glenn died Thursday afternoon at the James Cancer Hospital in Columbus.
Tributes to Glenn flowed in from all across the country
Glenn was the third U.S. astronaut in space and the first of them to get into orbit. He circled the Earth three times. The Soviet Union had put a man into orbit a year earlier in 1961.
“Godspeed, John Glenn,” fellow astronaut Scott Carpenter radioed before the Friendship 7 lifted off from NASA’s Cape Canaveral on Feb. 20, 1962. Then 40 years old, the one-time Marine pilot circled the Earth three times.
We stand on the shoulders of John Glenn, who helped pave the way for future explorers. Profile of his life & images: https://t.co/h7COVgbhc5 pic.twitter.com/38GnAfu9Sv
— NASA (@NASA) December 8, 2016
Glenn then spent 24 years as a Democrat from Ohio in the Senate, the longest serving senator in the state’s history, and briefly made a run for president in 1984. He returned to space in 1998, at age 77, aboard space shuttle Discovery.
He was the last survivor of the original Mercury 7 astronauts.
Glenn was born in Cambridge in 1921 and raised in New Concord.