John Glenn is mightily impressed with the six astronauts who accompanied him into space: "If I'd had my own pick of people, I don't think I could have picked better than the people I'm going to be flying with.''

A brief look at them:

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Commander Curtis Brown Jr. says his mother is usually ho-hum about his launches - but not this time.

"You're not on the one with Senator Glenn, are you?' Are you the commander of that one?'' Rachel Brown asked when her son told her he'd be rocketing away in October. "She's all excited and I go, `Wait a minute, Mom, time out. You're supposed to say: "If that's what you want to do.''' She goes, `Naw, naw, you're on there with Senator Glenn.''

The 42-year-old Air Force lieutenant colonel from Elizabethtown, N.C. - who laughs when he tells that story - is making his fifth spaceflight since becoming an astronaut in 1987.

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Pilot Steven Lindsey sees John Glenn's presence aboard Discovery as a first step toward commercializing spaceflight.

"Someday in the future we're going to be flying into space like we fly airliners,'' he says. "I don't know when that's going to happen, but I can almost guarantee that will happen someday, and one of the things we may want to know is what are the limitations to people doing that.''

Lindsey, 38, an Air Force lieutenant colonel from Temple City, Calif., was chosen as an astronaut in 1994. This is his second spaceflight; his first was just one year ago.

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Payload commander Stephen Robinson, seated next to John Glenn during the launch, had said he couldn't wait until Discovery reached orbit.

"It will be a real honor to give him his first zero-g handshake, because there was no one there to do it the first time around,'' Robinson says. He still marvels over "how a fellow who inspired me so young can still play that role so many years later.''

Robinson, 43, a Ph.D. engineer from Sacramento, Calif., began working for NASA in 1975 as a student assistant at Ames Research Center in his home state. He worked at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before being chosen as an astronaut in 1994.

He is making his second spaceflight, and is in charge of all the shuttle research. He will use the shuttle robot arm to release and retrieve a sun-gazing satellite.

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Dr. Scott Parazynski, an emergency medical specialist, will spend much of the flight attending to his favorite patient - 77-year-old John Glenn.

Parazynski will draw blood from Glenn and oversee his medical tests.

"This, for an astronaut, is about as exciting as it gets,'' he says. "This would be like a physicist having an opportunity to make a great discovery with Albert Einstein or a mountaineer to summit a Himalayan mountain with Edmund Hillary or, another sports analogy, to play baseball with Babe Ruth or soccer with Pele.''

Parazynski, 37, a mountaineer and former luge champion, is making his third spaceflight since becoming an astronaut in 1992. He was assigned to one of the long-duration Mir missions, but was dropped because he was too tall to fit in a Russian spacesuit.

He was born in Little Rock, Ark., but grew up around the world; his father worked for Boeing and helped build the Saturn moon rockets.

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Pedro Duque - Juan Glenn to his crewmates - is the first Spaniard in space. He's also the only space rookie and the baby of the crew: At 35, he wasn't even born when John Glenn first flew.

"For me it is very, very important not only for being the first Spaniard in space, but for being my first spaceflight and being able to do it with an all-veteran crew that will be able to tell me lots of stories,'' he says.

He will help with Discovery's science experiments.

Duque joined the European Space Agency's astronaut corps in 1992. He focused on the Russian space program, serving as a backup for a 1994 Mir mission. Then he shifted to NASA and was a backup for a 1996 shuttle flight.

He reported to Johnson Space Center later in 1996 for two years of full-fledged astronaut training.

He has three children: The youngest was born five weeks ago.

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Dr. Chiaki Mukai, a heart surgeon, is the first Japanese to fly in space twice. She already held the title of first Japanese woman in space.

She was thrilled to learn she'd fly with John Glenn. "I was soooo pleased,'' she says, giggling. So was her mother.

"My mother, she's 73 years old. She said, `Oh, Chiaki, I want to go.' I think this project is encouraging so many people,'' she says.

Mukai, 46, who also has a Ph.D. in physiology, was chosen by the Japanese Space Agency as an astronaut in 1985. She flew aboard space shuttle Columbia in 1994 and served as a backup for a medical-research flight in April.

She will help Glenn with his medical tests and conduct research in Discovery's mini-laboratory.