After Glenn's children Dave and Lyn helped him settle on the name Friendship 7 for his Mercury capsule, he decided that he didn't want to use stincles to write the name on like Shepard and Grissom used, he wanted the name hand painted. NASA employee Celia Bibby was selected for the job which went over so well that she also painted the name on every successive Mercury capsule. Of course, Shepard and Grissom gave Glenn a lot of flack for being "too good for stincles."
On February 20, 1962, Glenn thought that his flight would be posponed again, as it had been TEN! times before. The 11th time tured our to be the charm as the skys cleared over eastern Florida and he was shot into space, before the thrid person, and first American, to orbit planet Earth.
No long before the flight, Glenn saw a 35mm camera in a store window and wondered it NASA engineers could fix it up so that he would be able to take photographs while in orbit. He became the first space traveler to take picutres while in orbit and the camera mockup is now on display at the Smithsonian Air & SPace Museum in Washington, DC... or, at least it probably will be once the massive remodle is completed later this year.
One of the first pictures taken by Glenn during his flight was the above image of Africa.
40 million American households were glued to their TVs for the Glenn's nearly five hour space flight. They were treated to near-real time coverage showing Glenn and NASA interacting (with just a two minute tape delay). None of those households were as anxious as Glenn's own where his son Dave (far left), wife Annie, and daughter Lyn (near right) sat in their living room with thier pastor... just in case. He wouldn't be needed but for about the final third of his flight, NASA was extreamly concerned he might be.
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