Orbiter: Discovery (OV-103)

Launch Pad: 39-B, Cape Kennedy, Florida

Crew: Curtis L. Brown, Commander; Steven W. Lindsey, Pilot; Scott E. Parazynski, Mission Specialist; Stephen K. Robinson, Mission Specialist; Pedro Duque, Mission Specialist; Chiaki Mukai, Payload Specialist; John H. Glenn, Payload Specialist

Launch: Ocotber 24, 1998 at 2:20:19 PM, EST

Orbit: 134 orbits at an altitude of 345 miles

Mission Duration: 8 days, 21 hours, 44 minutes

Landing: November 7, 1998, at 12:04 PM EST, Kennedy Space Center, Florida

Payload: Spartan-201, HOST (HST Orbital Systems Test), IEH (International Extreme Ultraviolet Hitchhiker), Spacehab

Mission Objective: Conduct a variety of science experiments in Spacehab, deploy and retrieve Spartan satellite, and conduct operations with HOST and IEH. More than 80 scientific experiments will be completed during the mission.

A little more than 36 years after making his historic 3 orbit flight, John Glenn returned to space aboard the space shuttle Discovery during the STS-95 mission. The flight involved more than 80 scientific experiments, many of which Glenn was a part of. Glenn was a test subject for specific experiments which mimic the effects of aging and its relationship to space flight. Some of these simulations include loss of muscle mass and bone density, disrupted sleep patterns, a depressed immune system, and loss of balance. Discovery also carried a Spacehab module, which held 30 smaller experiments ranging from plant growth to developing new techniques for delivering anti-tumor medications.

The launch of STS-95 was delayed briefly while flight controllers evaluated an alarm during cabin pressure checks and several more minutes while range safety finders dealt with a stray aircraft in the area. It was not long before Discovery lifted off into a cloudless sky at 1:19 PM CST. About 45 minutes after launch, Discovery’s orbital maneuvering engines fired to place the orbiter into an orbit of 350 miles. Three hours and ten minutes into the flight, John Glenn relayed his first communication to Mission Control in Houston: “Hello Houston. This is PS2 and they got me sprung out of the middeck for a little while. We are going by Hawaii and that is absolutely gorgeous.” The first night of the mission, Glenn took a special thermistor capsule before bed that recorded his body’s core temperature during the night as part of the mission’s sleep research.

On the first full day of the mission, Glenn began giving the first of a series of blood and urine samples needed to look into the effects of space flight on his body. The blood draws are part of the Protein Turnover in Space Flight study, which will track the balance between protein building and breakdown, the two parts of protein turnover that contribute to muscle atrophy. That morning, Glenn and shuttle commander Curtis Brown answered questions from students at the Center of Science and Industry in Columbus, Ohio, and from John Glenn High School in New Concord, Ohio. Then began several of the medical studies planned for the flight that investigate how the human body changes in weightlessness and how those changes compare with the aging process.

John Glenn further contributed to Discovery’s experiments by feeding bone cell cultures as part of the Canadian OSTEO experiment, which evaluates bone cell activity under microgravity conditions. He also worked with the Advanced Organic Separations (ADSEP) experiment, which provides the capability to separate and purify biological materials, and the Microencapaulation Electrostatic Processing System (MEPS), which studies the formation of anti-tumor capsules containing two kinds of drugs. During the night, Glenn and fellow Payload Specialist Chiaki Mukai wore a host of sensors that recorded their movements and other information as part of the sleep research being conducted during the flight.

Each morning, Mukai and Glenn completed cognitive performance tests as part of their participation in the sleep study. These tests included measurements of how quickly they responded to light cues on a laptop computer. Each day, Glenn continued to work with the ADSEP and MEPS experiments, as well as wear electrodes and a data recorder which recorded his heart rhythm in orbit as part of an investigation of heart rate variablility during space flight. During the mission, John Glenn and Mission Specialist Pedro Duque worked on the Astroculture plant groowth experiment.

Glenn participated in many Spacehab experiments as well as worked on his own relating to the agining process. Besides working on experiments, the crew also conducted regular exercise, and photographic duties. During the course of the mission, the crew used live feeds to answer questions from children from across the United States, as well as recieved calls from Vice-President Al Gore, former Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter, and the Prime Minister of Japan. There were interviews with all of the major television networks and even on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

The STS-95 mission ended on November 7, 1998, after a smooth landing at 11:04 AM CST at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The re-entry descent lasted one hour, and was handled flawlessly by Commander Curtis Brown and Pilot Steve Lindsey. This ended John Glenn's return to space.