Page "John Glenn" Paragraph 22

Three decades later, after serving 24 years in the United States Senate, Glenn lifted off for a second space flight on October 29, 1998, on Space Shuttle Discovery's STS-95, in order to study the effects of space flight on the elderly.

At age 77, Glenn became the oldest person to go into space.

Glenn states in his memoir that he had no idea that NASA was willing to send him back into space when NASA announced the decision.

Three days prior to NASA's announcement, various radio stations were reporting that NASA had decided to send Glenn back into space.

Glenn's participation in the nine-day mission was criticized by some in the space community as a junket for a politician.

Others noted that Glenn's flight offered valuable research on weightlessness and other aspects of space flight on the same person at two points in life thirty-six years apart — by far the longest interval between space flights by the same person — providing information on the effects of spaceflight and weightlessness on the elderly, with an ideal control.

Upon the safe return of the STS-95 crew, Glenn ( and his crewmates ) received another ticker-tape parade, making him the tenth, and latest, person to have received multiple ticker-tape parades in a lifetime ( as opposed to that of a sports team ).

Just prior to the flight, on October 15, 1998, and for several months after, the main causeway to the Johnson Space Center, NASA Road 1, was temporarily renamed " John Glenn Parkway ".

Glenn was one of several NASA astronauts who experienced both a splashdown and touchdown on dry land.