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Music

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JOHN GLENN, Mercury Astronaut : "It's been 50 years, it's hard for me to believe that. It seems like just

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a couple of weeks ago to me because things were impressed so much at the time.

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The experiences of the flight have been recalled so often since that time."

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NARRATOR: Mercury astronaut John Glenn returned to NASA's Kennedy Space Center for a weekend of

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celebrations marking 50 years of Americans in orbit.

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During the events, Glenn and fellow Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter, the second American

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to orbit the planet, told crowds of current workers, news media members and a couple of today's astronauts

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about their adventures.

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GLENN: "Would your eye balls change shape, that was one of the concerns, and the little

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miniature eye chart is still on Friendship 7 in the Smithsonian up there in Washington."

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SCOTT CARPENTER, Mercury Astronaut: "There were a lot of unknowns in the early days of spaceflight.

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Some turned out to be important, some turned out to be unimportant."

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NARRATOR: Glenn made three orbits of Earth during his mission on Feb. 20, 1962.

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Carpenter followed three months later with a similar mission that continued to prove that people could

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operate in orbit. With those fledgling steps completed, the space agency continued making large

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strides into space, including the giant leaps to the surface of the moon seven years after Glenn began

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America's orbital exploration.

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Glenn and Carpenter undertook different adventures following their flights.

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Glenn served in the U.S. Senate while Carpenter charted a new career researching the underwater world.

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Glenn returned to NASA in 1998, for a research mission aboard space shuttle Discovery that

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lasted more than eight days. By comparing his body's reactions to microgravity with information

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from his first years with NASA, scientists could better judge some aspects of the aging process.

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For both Mercury astronauts, their flights of the 1960s opened an era of space exploration that

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continues to inspire Americans and produce technological innovations on Earth.

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GLENN: "And what have we done in the space program? We have 16 nations working together,