STS-95 carried John Glenn back into orbit in 1998.
The Space Shuttle Discovery launched STS-95 from Kennedy Space Center on October 29, 1998. John Glenn, the former Project Mercury astronaut and then a U.S. senator, served as a payload specialist on the seven-person crew.
Glenn’s return was historically significant because he had first orbited Earth aboard Friendship 7 in 1962. The mission allowed researchers to study how spaceflight affected an older body, including sleep, balance, immune function, and other physiological measures. Its broader objectives also included astronomy and life-science experiments conducted with the Spacehab module.
The mission is often confused with other late-1990s Shuttle flights, such as STS-88, STS-91, and STS-99. Those missions had different crews and objectives. STS-95 used Discovery and lasted nearly ten days; it also carried Spanish astronaut Pedro Duque and Japanese astronaut Chiaki Mukai. Glenn’s flight made him the oldest person to reach Earth orbit, a distinction he still holds even though later suborbital flights surpassed his age record for spaceflight generally.