John Glenn became the oldest astronaut in space when the Discovery shuttle carrying him and six others blasted off from Cape Canaveral. The 77-year-old US senator returned to space 36 years after he thrilled the nation as the first American to orbit the earth.
An estimated half a million sightseers yesterday watched the flawless launch of the shuttle, which is due to return to earth on November 7th.
President Clinton, accompanied by Mrs Hillary Clinton, was the first President to watch a space launch from Cape Canaveral. Mr Clinton said on arrival that "It's a great day for America and a great day for our senior citizens."
Mr Glenn, who is retiring from politics after four terms as a senator, will be a human guinea pig for 10 medical experiments measuring the effects of weightlessness on the body. Over 70 other scientific experiments will also be carried out during the nine-day flight.
As the shuttle lifted off, former astronaut Mr Scott Carpenter repeated the benediction he gave Mr Glenn as he began his first space flight in 1962. "Good luck, have a safe flight and . . . once again, Godspeed John Glenn." Sightseers at the launch site applauded as the 4.5 million pound shuttle lifted off its pad and soared into the cloudless sky at over 3,000 m.p.h. While the shuttle space flights have now become almost routine, the presence of the septuagenarian Mr Glenn on this one has caught the imagination of a country where youth is worshipped.
Some veterans of the Russian space programme hailed Mr Glenn's return to space after such a long delay. Mr German Titov (63), the second man in space, said he envied the American astronaut.
The former cosmonaut told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he now wants to beat Mr Glenn's record but will have to live until he is 78 or 80 to do so.
President Clinton denied during an interview after arriving at Cape Canaveral that he had any role in the decision by NASA to allow Mr Glenn to return to space. If he had had his way, Mr Clinton said, Mr Glenn would have been standing again for the Senate in next week's election.
Nasa later reported that a small door to a hatch with the brake parachute had fallen off at the launch and may have hit one of the shuttle engines. The agency did not express concern about the incident.
The brake chute is used at the landing to control the shuttle better in strong winds.