Glenn has been a catalyst in promoting the use of space flight for the benefit of healthy and productive aging. It sends the information to a sensor on his wrist. While he sleeps he wears a nightcap with sensors to record his brain activity. He wears a device on his torso to monitor his breathing and electrodes over his heart to study its beat. Injections of amino acids as well as blood and urine tests are performed to track muscle mass.
Muscle atrophy plagues both astronauts in space and the elderly.
Godspeed, John Glenn. We also asked a number of Space Studies faculty members where they were when John Glenn became the first U.S. citizen to orbit the Earth on February 20, 1962. I was at my Grandma's house. It had snowed so hard they closed school. I lived in Michigan at the time, and it had snowed about three feet.