American space icon John Glenn dies

“It was important because of the Cold War”, Glenn said at a Smithsonian forum. “What a full life well lived”.

The former astronaut had been admitted more than a week ago to the university’s James Cancer Hospital, according to the John Glenn College of Public Affairs.

Glenn was born in Cambridge, Ohio, July 18, 1921 to a father who was a plumber and a mother who was a teacher. Perhaps the most famous of these is “Godspeed, John Glenn”, spoken by mission controller Scott Carpenter as Glenn neared launch onboard Friendship 7 in February of 1962. Nearly 75 years and one day later, he passed away, taking one final flight into the unknown.

“I even remember what seat I was in”, Ostrow recalled on Thursday. “I wasn’t sitting. I was standing”.

In reality, those particles were most likely just Glenn’s own sweat or urine being vented from the spacecraft, glittering, frozen in sunlight. As America’s fledgling space program took flight, this redheaded freckled faced Ohioan became the man that every little boy wanted to grow up to be – a courageous fighter pilot, an heroic astronaut, a respected statesman, and a gentleman.

In a statement on his homepage, former US astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who was the second man to walk on the Moon, said he was “saddened” by Glenn’s passing, describing him as a “space pioneer and world icon”.

More than anything, Glenn was the ultimate and uniquely American space hero: a combat veteran with an easy smile, a strong marriage of 70 years and nerves of steel. At a post-flight news conference, Glenn was characteristically cool. – At NASA news conference in 1959 to introduce the Mercury 7 astronauts. From Friendship 7 to the Space Shuttle Discovery, he truly answered a higher calling to public service.

House Speaker Ryan ordered the US Capitol flags to be lowered to half-staff in honor of John Glenn’s passing. But Glenn and the others were hometown heroes. Glenn was a pallbearer for Robert F. Kennedy’s funeral. He would later have a long political career as a USA senator, but that didn’t stop his pioneering ways. Space travel was in its infancy.

His flight followed two suborbital flights by Alan Shepard Jr and Gus Grissom. Neither astronaut left the earth’s atmosphere in the cramped triangular Mercury capsules.

This week, Glenn began training to go into space again, as a “payload specialist” on a shuttle in October.

Astronaut and former U.S. Senator John Glenn (D-OH) (L) and musician Diana Krall attend the memorial service for astronaut Neil Armstrong at the National Cathedral September 13, 2012 in Washington, DC.