As astronauts from Artemis II head back to Earth after circling the moon, it’s a moment to look back at when the U.S. was still trying to catch up in space.
On Feb. 20, 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, a turning point in the race against the Soviet Union.
His spacecraft, the Mercury Friendship 7, was barely big enough to hold him. It’s now on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
Here & Now’s Scott Tong spoke with retired Smithsonian curator Mike Neufeld about the capsule, the moment and what it took to get there.
What was happening in the space race leading up to Glenn’s flight?
“We were always behind, at least in the most spectacular feats, because the Soviet Union kept scoring first with Sputnik. And the first to the moon and then the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, on April 12, 1961. So the United States looked ‘backwards,’ at least in space technologies. And this was embarrassing nationally.”
Who was Glenn before this mission?
“He was already a war hero. He had flown fighters in World War II in the Pacific. And then he had flown in the Korean War. He had shot down MiG [aircrafts]. And then he became a test pilot and set a transcontinental speed record. So he was one of the most famous of the first seven astronauts.”
What was the Friendship 7 capsule actually like?
“It’s a cone with a small cylinder on top, basically. And that cone was the nose cone that goes on top of a rocket. It was so small that the astronauts joked that you didn’t get into it, you put it on.
“They had to squeeze. They all had to be 5 foot 11 [inches] or shorter. And they were all very trim, fit men and only about 150 pounds to squeeze into this thing.”
What did it look like inside?
“You can see the Friendship 7 down in our ‘Milestones of Flight’ gallery, and you can sort of look into the cockpit and see how tight it is. You go through this hatch, and then there’s an instrument panel in front of you. You can get an even better view if you go up to Freedom 7 in the ‘Destination Moon’ exhibit. So that was the one that Alan Shepard became the first American in space in.”
What were the medical concerns about spaceflight?
“That was certainly a question the doctors had. I mean, some doctors had very scary predictions about how, once your eyeballs were weightless, you could no longer focus and you wouldn’t be able to see. And they had many other medical questions that were scary. And so Glenn had to periodically look at the eye chart and determine how good it looked. And of course, the fears turned out to be wrong. There was no, at least short-term, effect on vision.”
When you step back, what did this mission represent?
“It was part of this history of putting humans in space, sending them to the moon, and now sending them back to the moon. So Glenn was obviously an extremely important moment for the United States because that’s when we put a man in orbit. That’s when we showed that we were on the same par as the Soviet Union, or at least catching up on one of the beginnings of Americans traveling first into orbit and then into deep space.”
This interview was edited for clarity.
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Janaya Williams produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Catherine Welch. Williams also produced it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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