A Manual of Parliamentary Practice. For the Use of the Senate of the United States.

This hardbound copy of A Manual of Parliamentary Practice flew aboard the space shuttle Discovery, traveling 3.6 million miles from October 29 to November 7, 1998, with NASA mission STS-95. Senator John Glenn, a former NASA astronaut who joined STS-95 as a payload specialist (becoming the oldest person to fly in space), sponsored the item as part of the mission's Official Flight Kit (OFK). As a guide for legislative procedure, the Manual, which was compiled by Thomas Jefferson and originally published in 1801, had a significant influence on the Senate's approach to order and decorum. This 1993 reprint, featuring a gold-embossed profile portrait of Jefferson on its cover, marks the 250th anniversary of Jefferson's birth.

Prior to launch, the Manual, like other STS-95 OFK items, was processed at NASA's Johnson Space Center, listed on the cargo manifest, sealed in plastic, weighed, and stowed aboard the space shuttle orbiter. A small yellow sticker on the back denotes that the item was #106 on the OFK manifest. Glenn presented this Manual to the Senate in December 1998 as an official memento of the spaceflight and in recognition of the institution's support for space research.