posted 02-20-2013 05:12 AM               

Spotting spacecraft: John Glenn's Friendship 7 'found' in Texas

If it was located almost anywhere else in the country, the sight of a space capsule sitting alongside a typical suburban intersection might seem out of place. But in Pasadena, Texas, located only about 20 minutes from NASA's Johnson Space Center where retired rockets, capsules and even a space shuttle pepper the landscape as lawn ornaments, it is easy to see why such a spectacle might be taken for granted.

But there at the corner of Red Bluff Road and St. Augustine Avenue, opposite a gas station, a cash loan store, and an elementary school, sits John Glenn's 1962 Mercury spacecraft, "Friendship 7." Or to put it more accurately, there is a fairly faithful replica of the small capsule that Glenn rode to become the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth...

(Additional photos of the same model from February 2005, before its restoration, can be seen on A Field Guide to American Spacecraft.)