Look Closely at This Picture of John Glenn
The reflected faces of NASA staff appear in John Glenn’s spacesuit
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/accounts/headshot/smartnews-colin-schultz-240.jpg)
The credit for great achievements often accures to great heroes—bold adventurers, of mountains, of oceans, of space, who risked life and limb to chart a new course. But behind each of these great figures was a team or a nation footing the bill, keeping them safe, helping them to find their way.
In the photograph above, we get an intriguing portrait of one of America's heroes, the pioneering astronaut John Glenn—the first American to orbit the Earth. In February 1962, Glenn piloted the spacecraft Friendship 7 around the Earth three times before landing in Atlantic ocean. This portrait was captured just a month before launch. Now look closer. You can the faces of NASA staff reflected Glenn's suit—a glimpse into some of the prodigious support that carried him safely to space and back.
H/T National Archive
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/accounts/headshot/smartnews-colin-schultz-240.jpg)