In Space, No One Can Hear You Bark!

Well, February 20 marks the 48th anniversary of astronaut John Glenn's historic spaceflight where he became the first person to orbit the earth. He actually orbited the earth three times during the flight. After the first orbit, the spacecraft experienced "technical problems" and John flew the remaining three orbits using manual controls. What can I say, I really wanted to know what that red button did.

Some additional interesting facts you might not know include the fact that John was 40 years old when he made this flight in 1962. He was one of the oldest astronauts in NASA's Mercury space flight program. John made old guy history again when he became the oldest astronaut, and the first sitting US Senator, to fly in space. He was a member of the Space Shuttle Discovery crew that flew on mission STS-95 in October 1998.

See you next week!

-- Charlie