Former Astronaut and U.S. Senator John Glenn Has Died at 95
Former astronaut and U.S. Sen. John Glenn has died in Ohio. He was 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.
"To look out at this kind of creation out here and not believe in God is to me impossible." - On his second flight on space shuttle Discovery in 1998 at the age of 77.
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.
In 1959, Glenn famously said at a NASA news conference, "We are placed here with certain talents and capabilities. It is up to each of us to use those talents and capabilities as best you can. If you do that, I think there is a power greater than any of us that will place the opportunities in our way, and if we use our talents properly, we will be living the kind of life we should live."
Glenn then spent 24 years as a Democrat from Ohio in the Senate 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.
Famed journalist Dan Rather also issued a touching statement:
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