John Glenn worked for NASA.
John Glenn . Before joining NASA , Glenn was a distinguished fighter pilot in World War II and Korea with six Distinguished Flying Crosses and eighteen clusters on his Air Medal . He was one of the Mercury Seven , military test pilots selected in 1959 by NASA as the United States ' first astronauts . After Glenn resigned from NASA in 1964 and retired from the Marine Corps the following year , he planned to run for a U.S. Senate seat from Ohio .