Feb. 20, 1962 - The three-orbit flight around the world by Lieut. Col. John Glenn Jr. today puts man closer to the moon. The next step will be a “repeat performance” of the triple orbit, this one by another astronaut, some time within the next eight weeks. Before the end of 1962, plans call for a series of three more triple orbits as well as one flight that will attempt to surpass the trip taken by Russia’s Maj. Gherman S. Titov on Aug. 6 last year, when the Soviet astronaut circled the globe 17 times in a little more than 25 hours. There will be many dramatic and daring flights in the next couple of years, but probably the next major advance will be the Gemini 1964 mission — the flight involving two men riding a capsule shot into orbit by a Titan II rocket. At the same time, research continues on the 1,500,000-pound-thrust Saturn booster that is scheduled to take three men in a capsule around the globe in 1966. This flight will be one of the phases of the Apollo project, which includes, later, the man-on-the-moon trip.
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