CHANTILLY, Va. – The other day, they celebrated the machine. On Thursday (April 19), they honored those who built, maintained, controlled and flew her.
The occasion was the formal transfer of space shuttle Discovery by NASA to the Smithsonian Institution’s Udvar-Hazy Center, the barn-like building near Dulles International Airport here that serves as an annex to the Air & Space Museum in downtown Washington. Most of the commanders of Discovery’s 39 flights were present to witness Discovery’s retirement after its whirlwind tour of the region aboard a modified Boeing 747 on Tuesday. The locals are still buzzing about it.
Besides getting their first up-close look at Discovery, which shows the scars of more than 5,000 Earth orbits and 39 fiery reentries, the throng that came out to admire her also got to see another legend: a Discovery crew member from a 1998 mission who became the oldest human to fly in space. He also happens to be the first American to have orbited the Earth, and is a former U.S. senator and onetime presidential candidate.
John Herschel Glenn, Jr., now 90, sat dignified on a stage full of dignitaries, delivered brief remarks about man’s unquenchable thirst to explore (“What’s over that next hill?”) and said it was time to move on from the canceled shuttle program to the next steps in manned spaceflight. The living embodiment of the “Right Stuff” posed for a thousand pictures and graciously consented to dozens of interviews with local TV and international press outlets, all the while maintaining the bearing of the Marine Corps test pilot he once was.
John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, meets the press following the retirement ceremony for space shuttle Discovery.