John Glenn in orbit in weightlessness on board Friendship 7 during the first US orbital spaceflight, 20 February 1962

Vintage gelatin silver print on fiber-based paper, printed 1962, with NASA HQ caption numbered "62-MA-181" on verso,20,3 x 25,4 cm light crease in the right margin

John Glenn is photographed during activities in space (he is raising his helmet in order to eat food) by an automatic sequence motion picture camera as he became the first American to orbit the Earth on February 20, 1962. His Mercury spacecraft Friendship 7 made three orbits in its 4 hours 55 minute flight. Glenn was in a state of weightlessness traveling at 17,500 mph as this sequence of pictures was taken.

“Weightlessness was a pleasant experience. I reported I felt fine as soon as the spacecraft separated from the launch vehicle, and throughout the flight this feeling continued to be the same. […]

On the relatively short flight of Friendship 7, eating was not a necessity, but rather an attempt to determine whether there would be any problem in consuming and digesting food in a weightless state. At no time did I have any difficulty eating…
John Glenn (Pilot’s Flight Report)

Literature:
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, June 1962, p. 803 (variant); TIME, 2 March 1962, p. 12 (variant).