Our Mission

The John Glenn Astronomy Park is dedicated to sparking an interest in science, learning, and exploration by sharing with visitors the wonders of the sky, both day and night.   

The Inspiration

Throughout most of history, humans have been inspired by the wondrous sight of a night sky filled with stars.  Our stories and mythologies have been mapped upon the patterns of the stars.   Our calendars, festivals, and agriculture have been linked to the movement of the heavens.  In recent times, a view of the night sky has been the inspiration in many young people for lifelong passion for science in general.

Sadly, however, the lights of our modern world have, in recent decades, put our view of the heavens behind a veil of artificial light.   Most of us live under a sky that gives only a pale, washed out hint of its former beauty.

An astronomy park in the Hocking Hills State park was inspired by our vanishing night sky.   The Hocking Hills, in rural southeastern Ohio, is one of the few areas left in the state of Ohio where the night sky can be seen in its near pristine state.   The observatory provides a venue for visitors to the Hocking Hills State park to experience the night sky through a large telescope and with their eyes.

The observatory also draws on the countless generations of humans who marked the important changes of the seasons through the motion of the sun and who built great structures, like Stonehenge in England,  the Chaco Canyon Kiva in New Mexico or many Hopewell and Fort Ancient Earthworks in Ohio, that commemorated these days.  The plaza has been designed to allow the rays of the sun to fall upon a special central point on the first day of each of the four seasons.

About John Glenn

John Glenn was a decorated Military Pilot, a US Senator, and, most famously, the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth.

John Glenn was born in 1921 in Cambridge, Ohio and was raised in the small town of New Concord, home of Muskingum University where he attended college.   He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps soon after the US entered World War II.   He was a highly decorated pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War, as well, and few over 90 missions. 

After the war, he became a test pilot and developed a reputation as an outstanding aviator.  On July 16, 1957, in a mission dubbed “Project Bullet”, Glenn set the nation’s transcontinental flight speed record.  It was this experience that the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration cited when choosing him as one of the Mercury 7, the first American Astronauts.   During the Korean War, Glenn would fly combat missions with Red Sox great Ted Williams.

On February 20, 1962, Glenn was launched into space atop a Mercury  Atlas rocket, a vehicle that had experienced several catastrophic failures prior to this mission, and orbited the earth three times during a mission that lasted 4 hours and 55 minutes.  Towards the end of the flight, a failure in the automatic-control system of his Mercury Capsule, Friendship 7, required him to take the controls and fly manually.  This was the first time this had been done.   The landing was successful, and Glenn returned a national hero. On March 1, 1962, Glenn was welcomed home by millions at a ticker tape parade in his honor in New York City.

After retiring from NASA, Glenn entered and made three attempts to run for the US Senate- succeeding on his third try.   During his senate career he was considered an expert in science and technology and on military matters.   Glenn’s advocacy for the reduction of nuclear weapons culminated in the passage of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978, which was signed into law by President Carter. In 1984, Glenn sought the Democratic Party’s Presidential Nomination.  

Glenn served in the Senate until his retirement in December 1998.    That same year, it was announced that he would be returning to space on board the space shuttle Discovery as part of the STS-95 crew.   Serving as Payload Specialist, Glenn began his second flight on October 29, 1998, making him the oldest person to fly in space.

In 2015 John Glenn gave his permission to use his name on the Observatory Park project being planned by the Friends of the Hocking Hills. 

Glenn died on December 8, 2016 at the OSU Wexner Medical Center.   

We hope to see his legacy of exploration and inspiration continue!