When Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human into space on April 12, 1961, the American space program rose to the occasion, and less than a month later, astronaut Alan Shepard became the ...

But, well before the moon landing, back in 1962, an astronaut called John Glenn got to fly up to space in a rocket, where he saw something that 'he'd never seen anything like' before in his life.

On February 20, 1962, NASA launched an astronaut into orbit around the Earth for the first time. John Glenn was the third ...

On Feb. 20, 1962, Mercury-Atlas 6 mission launched, sending the Friendship 7 capsule containing John Glenn into orbit. Two Soviets – Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov – had previously orbited Earth, but ...

A launch pad that once sent the first American into orbit is being revived for a new era of commercial spaceflight.