Flight through
heavens awes Glenn
Astronaut reports he's adjusted fine
November 2, 1998
by Paul Hoversten
HOUSTON -- For John Glenn, life in orbit is almost a
religious experience.
"I pray every day," Glenn, 77, told reporters Sunday
in response to a question about whether spaceflight had
strengthened his faith.
"Looking at the Earth from this vantage point,
looking at this kind of creation and to not believe in
God, to me, is impossible," said Glenn, a Presbyterian.
"To see (Earth) laid out like that only strengthens
my beliefs," he said.
In orbit: John Glenn retrieves a paper
airplane for Steven Lindsey, front right.
Steve Robinson, left, and Chiaki Mukai are in
background. |
It was a rare admission from a normally private man
that reflected what returning to space after 36 years
has meant to him. Glenn, the first American in orbit and
now the world's oldest astronaut, spent only five hours
in the cosmos on his Mercury flight in 1962.
Now, he says, it's "a real thrill and emotional" to
look out the window at Earth. "I know 'awesome' is an
overused word, but if anything is really awesome, it's
looking out and seeing that."
As for the physical aspects of weightlessness, Glenn
said he had bumped his head a few times and watched his
food float away but otherwise was adjusting just fine on
the fourth day of Discovery's nine-day mission.
"I've had no discomfort whatsoever," Glenn said in
the 30-minute press conference from space.
He hasn't gotten spacesick and seems to have gotten
over the puffy face all astronauts initially have when
body fluids shift to their heads in weightlessness.
"I came up expecting to be nauseous," Glenn said. "I
haven't had any of that so far. I'm sleeping pretty
well."
Glenn is wearing special sleep gear to measure his
pulse, temperature, brain waves and breathing. The
instruments are part of his experiments to see how the
debilitating effects of weightlessness on astronauts
compare with age-related problems in the elderly.
During the news conference, Glenn praised NASA
workers on the agency's 40th anniversary, urged
Americans to vote Tuesday and even tossed in "Go,
Bucks," for the top-rated Ohio State Buckeyes football
team.
Discovery commander Curt Brown, who joined Glenn for
the news conference, said the crew has "had a very, very
successful mission. We've got a lot of science done.
Everything has been going our way the last couple of
days."
Earlier Sunday, Discovery's astronauts released a
solar science satellite for 48 hours of observation. A
different crew failed to safely drop it off in orbit
last year.
Using the shuttle's robotic arm, Discovery astronaut
Steve Robinson gently dropped the 3,000-pound Spartan
satellite into space while the shuttle soared 341 miles
above Mexico's Baja peninsula.
Brown then eased Discovery away from the $ 6 million
satellite, so it could go to work.
Spartan will spend two days studying the sun's outer
edge, or corona, and its atmosphere and solar wind
before Discovery moves back in to retrieve it Tuesday.
The crew will grab it with the robotic arm, stow it
in the cargo bay and return it to Earth when the shuttle
lands in Florida Saturday.
The corona, which is about 1 billion times dimmer
than the center of the sun, occasionally erupts in solar
flares that can temporarily knock out communications
satellites around Earth.
Scientists believe Spartan's two science instruments
may be able to detect at least two -- and possibly more
-- small eruptions during each day in orbit. Those
eruptions would pose no danger to Discovery's crew.
Last November, a crew aboard Columbia dropped off the
satellite without first turning it on.
The astronauts tried desperately to recapture Spartan
but lost it when an accidental bump from the robotic arm
sent it tumbling away. It took an emergency spacewalk by
two Columbia astronauts to retrieve it.
Spartan, which has since had modifications to make
its deploy and retrieval easier, is being reflown at a
cost of $ 1.5 million.
