Friendship 7 — First American in Orbit

On the morning of February 20, 1962, John Glenn, a Marine Corps pilot, rode an Atlas rocket off Cape Canaveral and became the first American to orbit the Earth. Two Soviet cosmonauts had orbited before him, and two Americans had made short suborbital flights.

He circled the planet three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes. On the first orbit he noticed small glowing particles drifting past the window, which he called fireflies and which turned out to be flakes of frozen condensation. On the second, a sensor suggested the heat shield might have come loose, so mission control had him keep the retrorocket pack strapped on through reentry to hold it in place. The warning was false.

Glenn asked his children for ideas for a name, chose Friendship, and added the 7 for the seven Mercury astronauts. In 1998, at 77, he flew in space again, aboard the shuttle Discovery.

The capsule hangs alone above the curve of the Earth, a dark cone with UNITED STATES lettered on its side and its name in script below. Under it the planet is blue and streaked with cloud, the white banks warming to cream where the sun reaches them, with a thin line of atmosphere along the edge. Above is the black of space, with nothing else in view.