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Published February 17, 2012, 12:00 AM

Photo gallery: 50th anniversary of astronaut John Glenn's historic first mission


This Feb. 20, 1962, photo made available by NASA shows astronaut John Glenn during his space flight in the Friendship 7 Mercury spacecraft, weightless and traveling at 17,500 mph. The image was made by an automatic sequence motion picture camera. (AP Photo/NASA)

  • This Feb. 20, 1962, photo made available by NASA shows astronaut John Glenn during his space flight in the Friendship 7 Mercury spacecraft, weightless and traveling at 17,500 mph. The image was made by an automatic sequence motion picture camera. (AP Photo/NASA)
  • In this Feb. 20, 1962, photo provided by NASA, astronaut John Glenn climbs into the Friendship 7 space capsule atop an Atlas rocket at Cape Canaveral, Fla. for the flight which made him the first American to orbit the earth. (AP Photo/NASA)
  • In this Jan. 25, 2012 photo, former Sen. John Glenn speaks during an interview at his office in Columbus, Ohio. Glenn was the first American to orbit Earth, in 1962, and also became the oldest person in space by orbiting Earth with six astronauts aboard shuttle Discovery in 1998. (AP Photo/Jay LaPrete)
  • In this Jan. 25, 2012, photo, former Sen. John Glenn talks in Columbus, Ohio, about the controller of Friendship 7 and how he used it to manually control the spacecraft when the thruster failed. Glenn was the first American to orbit Earth, piloting Friendship 7 around the planet three times in 1962. (AP Photo/Jay LaPrete)
  • This 1961 file photo provided by NASA shows the original seven Mercury astronauts in their silver spacesuits. First row, from left, are Walter Schirra Jr., Donald Slayton, John Glenn and Scott Carpenter. In the back row are Alan Shepard, Jr., Virgil Grissom and Gordon Cooper. (AP Photo/NASA, File)