India, Feb. 20 -- Astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth on February 20, 1962, but he was known also for a succinct and profound quote, with which he elevated the idea of space travel to a metaphysical level.

"To look out at this kind of creation out here and not believe in God is to me impossible," John Herschel Glenn Jr said after the second and last time he traveled to space in 1998.

On his spaceflights, he said, he prayed every day - a seeming dichotomy as science and the concept of God are seen as adversarial ideas.

Glenn did not see it like that.

He was a devout Presbyterian.

"John Glenn is always used as that paradigmatic example of somebody who had a strong faith before becoming an astronaut, and fo...