BACK IN SPACE; GLENN GETS OK TO ORBIT AT AGE 77.

Byline: Francis X. Clines The New York Times

In a wonder of aeronautics and geriatrics, Sen. John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, has won his campaign to be rocketed back into space at the age of 77, NASA officials and experts said Thursday.

The news that the still-spry, ever-ebullient hero of the pioneer U.S. space program will go back into orbit for about 10 days this fall - after his 77th birthday in July - was an instant source of coast-to-coast smiles of amazement Thursday among Americans who cherish the memory of Glenn's dramatic three-orbit ride 36 years ago.

In that historic flight, Glenn's image of mid-American modesty and freckle-faced mastery of his space mission was an instant restorative for national morale, badly eroded by the Soviet Union's alarming superiority in early space flight during the Cold War.

For his new trip, this time as the oldest astronaut in history, the Ohio Democrat won a place aboard the Discovery shuttle flight next October for experiments about space and the aging process, space experts said.

The news was not officially confirmed, but space experts being briefed Thursday by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the flight would be officially announced today at a news conference.

``We think we have a pretty solid rationale for it,'' a high NASA official said Thursday, noting that Glenn would attend the news conference and six space-medicine experts would be there, prepared to discuss the issues surrounding his return to orbit.

The space agency has given the flight an unambiguous thumbs up, Dr. John M. Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University and a periodic NASA adviser, said Thursday.

``I doubt that NASA would have gone out and solicited Sen. Glenn, but he has been able to make a case that has convinced them that he is qualified to fly and that there are benefits to having him do so,'' Logsdon said.

Glenn, looking almost as lithe, sparkle-eyed and confident as he was before his first go-round as an astronaut, came out of his Capitol office briefly as the news spread and a throng of reporters gathered.

``I can understand there is a great deal of interest in this matter, but today I have no comment on it,'' he said, seeming in a merry mood. ``I look forward to discussing this in the future.''

For Glenn, who plans to conclude his political career at the end of this year, the flight would be an enormous personal coup. He has been a pesky, one-man lobby for his return to space flight for the past two years.

For the nation, his rocket trip probably will be a spiritual lark and a fresh sort of space adventure. Reactions of amazement and pleasure Thursday overwhelmed any expressions of concern and doubt that he can handle the flight.

``Why can't he?'' Dr. Adrian LeBlanc, a medical physicist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, commented. ``It did not occur to me to fly older people,'' said LeBlanc, who studies how astronauts' muscle and bone react to spaceflight, but said he sees no problem if Glenn is fit and has no serious medical problems.

So far, the oldest astronaut to fly in space is Dr. Story Musgrave, who was 61 when he made his sixth and final journey into space aboard the shuttle Columbia in 1996. On that mission, from Nov. 19 to Dec. 7, Musgrave completed his flight career, after being told by NASA that he would not go up again.

Before Musgrave, Vance Brand was the oldest to fly in space - 59 on his last space flight in 1990.

Glenn would not be the first incumbent senator to voyage into space. Sen. Jake Garn, R-Utah, chairman of the space committee, achieved that distinction. He made 109 orbits in 1985 and became so famously space-sick that his Senate nickname upon return to the Capitol cloakroom became ``Barfin' Jake.''

The Discovery shuttle normally has a crew of six, but a seventh space can be easily added for Glenn, officials said. Glenn, who flies his own private plane between Washington and his home in Ohio, has for months been dismissing any doubts of whether he still has ``The Right Stuff,'' as described by Tom Wolfe in his book about the early space program.

Glenn was one of the Mercury Seven, the original astronauts. Wolfe wrote: ``Among the seven instant heroes, John Glenn's light shone brightest.''

The outpouring of relief and adulation was phenomenal after his three-orbit flight in February 1962. The first American to orbit Earth received a Broadway parade reminiscent of the one after Charles Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic airplane flight 35 years before. Glenn and his party attended a play that night, ``How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,'' and the audience rose and cheered the sight of him. The cast had rewritten dialogue lines in the play to make proud jokes about the grand Glenn space flight. It was like a royal command performance.

``I think it's great,'' said White House spokesman Mike McCurry of the word that Glenn would be weightless once more. Asked what President Clinton thought about the idea, McCurry said, ``He has the same affection for John Glenn that most Americans do.''

THE FACTS

Name: John H. Glenn Jr.

Age: 76.

Background:Born in Cambridge, Ohio.

Education::Muskingum College, New Concord, Ohio, 1939-1942; Naval Aviation Cadet Program, Corpus Christi, Texas, 1942-1943; Amphibious Warfare School, Quantico, Va., 1951-1952.

Family:Wife, Anna Margaret; son, David; daughter, Carolyn Ann; two grandchildren.

Career:U.S. Marine Corps, 1943-1965: combat pilot in World War II and Korea; flight instructor at Corpus Christi, 1949-1951; test pilot on Navy and Marine Corps jet fighters and attack aircraft, 1953-1959; U.S. space program, 1959-1964; executive with Royal Crown International, 1965-1974; U.S. senator, D-Ohio, 1974-1998.

Career highlights:Set a transcontinental speed record in 1957 for the first supersonic flight from Los Angeles to New York; made history Feb. 20, 1962, as the first American to orbit the Earth; became first popularly elected senator from Ohio to win a fourth consecutive term in 1992.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

PHOTO (1) In 1962, astronaut John Glenn goes through preparations in his space suit.

Associated Press

(2 -- color) John Glenn talks at the Smithsonian in 1987.

Back in space

Associated Press