Cape Canaveral, Fla. ? John Glenn vividly remembers everything about the day, 40 years ago today, when he became the first American to orbit the Earth.

It’s no wonder.

A technician adjusts the neck wrap of astronaut John Glenn in this Feb. 20, 1962, photo. Glenn says he still vividly remembers everything about the day 40 years ago when he became the first American to orbit the Earth.

“I guess it’s been a rare day that somebody hasn’t brought up something about that,” said Glenn, who at age 80 is the first astronaut to reach the 40-year milestone. (All four of his space predecessors have died.)

The question he is asked most frequently about his flight aboard Friendship 7 on Feb. 20, 1962: Were you scared?

After all, he was only the third American and the fifth person in the world to rocket into space, and the first to ride the Mercury Atlas into orbit.

No, he was not afraid, but he was apprehensive.

Statistical studies at the time gave him a 90 percent chance of returning alive, Glenn said.

At the time, psychiatrists feared weightlessness might prove so euphoric he would not want to return to Earth; they called it the breakaway phenomenon. But Glenn said he thought it was nonsense.

“I can laugh about them now, but they were serious then, I’ll tell you,” he said in an interview last week.

During the five-hour, three-orbit flight, Glenn had to overcome problems with the capsule’s automatic control system and contend with grave concerns about the spacecraft’s heat shield.

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The retired senator, who made a comeback as the world’s oldest spaceman in 1998 aboard space shuttle Discovery, said he is disappointed NASA has yet to sign up another senior citizen to help produce more data on the effects of space on older astronauts.

Glenn still flies his own plane and takes an active role in The John Glenn Institute at Ohio State University, created to promote public service and policy.

He will mark his 40th space anniversary with a sold-out lecture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum and a call to the crew of the international space station. On Sunday, he will be reunited at Cape Canaveral with the three other surviving Mercury astronauts, Wally Schirra, Scott Carpenter and Gordon Cooper.

Glenn intends to be around for his 50th anniversary, maybe even his 60th. “Getting old is two things, attitude and exercise, that keep you going,” he said.