Space Shuttle Discovery blasts off on STS-95 with 77-year old John Glenn on board

No man has been a bigger part of the NASA manned spaceflight program than John Glenn, the WW II Navy pilot who was one of the founding pilots chosen for the Mercury spaceflight missions and served as the backup for Alan Shephard and Gus Grissom, the two men in space. In some sense, Glenn is NASA: its start with the first ever orbital flight (Alan Shepard did not reach orbital height, or stay up long enough to complete an orbit), and its limit, as the oldest man on record to fly into space.

On this day, October 29, 1998, septuagenarian John Glenn (although you could hardly guess the age from the looks of him) took off on the Space Shuttle Discovery as by far the oldest man to go to space.

Thirty-six years prior, Glenn set another landmark event in the history of spaceflight, becoming just the second man, and the first American to orbit the Earth. Glen replicated what Yury Gagarin did just ten months earlier, reaching an orbit 162 miles above the Earth, and circling the earth for three laps, totalling five hours. Before him, no American spent more than fiteen minutes in space, and there was great concern regarding how Glenn would hold up, but his successful mission touched off a half a century of space flight innovation that launched 135 rockets, landed astronauts on the moon, and built international space stations in orbit.