Question: Scott Carpenter was the second American to orbit the Earth, after the first American orbited the Earth, circling it three times, in what year?
Context: A Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO, also called a heliosynchronous orbit) is a nearly polar orbit around Earth (also called geocentric orbit) in which the satellite passes over any given point of the planet's surface at the same local solar time.  Such an orbit can place a satellite in constant sunlight and is useful for imaging, spy, and weather satellites.  More technically, it is an orbit arranged in such a way that it precesses once a year.  The surface illumination angle will be nearly the same every time that the satellite is overhead.  This consistent lighting is a useful characteristic for satellites that image the Earth's surface in visible or infrared wavelengths (e.g. weather and spy satellites) and for other remote-sensing satellites (e.g. those carrying ocean and atmospheric remote-sensing instruments that require sunlight).  For example, a satellite in sun-synchronous orbit might ascend across the equator twelve times a day each time at approximately 15:00 mean local time.  This is achieved by having the osculating orbital plane precess (rotate) approximately one degree eastward each day with respect to the celestial sphere to keep pace with the Earth's movement around the Sun. Apollo 8, the second human spaceflight mission in the United States Apollo space program, was launched on December 21, 1968, and became the first crewed spacecraft to leave Earth orbit, reach the Earth's Moon, orbit it and return safely to Earth.  The three-astronaut crew — Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot James Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders — became the first humans to: travel beyond low Earth orbit; escape Earth's gravity; see Earth as a whole planet; enter the gravity well of another celestial body (Earth's moon); orbit another celestial body (Earth's moon); directly see the far side of the Moon with their own eyes; witness an Earthrise; escape the gravity of another celestial body (Earth's moon); and re-enter the gravitational well of Earth.  The 1968 mission, the third flight of the Saturn V rocket and that rocket's first crewed launch, was also the first human spaceflight launch from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, located adjacent to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Malcolm Scott Carpenter (May 1, 1925 – October 10, 2013), (Cmdr, USN), was an American naval officer and aviator, test pilot, aeronautical engineer, astronaut, and aquanaut.  He was one of the original seven astronauts selected for NASA's Project Mercury in April 1959.  Carpenter was the second American (after John Glenn) to orbit the Earth and the fourth American in space, following Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, and Glenn. RazakSAT is a Malaysian Earth observation satellite carrying a high-resolution camera.  It was launched into low Earth orbit by a Falcon 1 rocket on 14 July 2009.  It was placed into a near-equatorial orbit that presents many imaging opportunities for the equatorial region.  It weighs over three times a much as TiungSAT-1 and carries a high resolution Earth observation camera.  Developed in conjunction with Satrec Initiative, the satellite's low inclination orbit (9 degrees) brought it over Malaysia a dozen or more times per day.  This was intended to provide greatly increased coverage of Malaysia, compared to most other Earth observation satellites.  An audit report released in October 2011 revealed that the satellite had failed after only 1 year of operation. John Herschel Glenn Jr. (July 18, 1921 – December 8, 2016) was a United States Marine Corps aviator, engineer, astronaut, and United States Senator from Ohio.  In 1962 he became the first American to orbit the Earth, circling it three times. Vostok 2 (Russian: Восток-2 , "Orient 2" or "East 2") was a Soviet space mission which carried cosmonaut Gherman Titov into orbit for a full day on August 6, 1961 to study the effects of a more prolonged period of weightlessness on the human body.  Titov orbited the Earth over 17 times, exceeding the single orbit of Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1 − as well as the suborbital spaceflights of American astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom aboard their respective Mercury-Redstone 3 and 4 missions.  Indeed, Titov's number of orbits and flight time would not be surpassed by an American astronaut until Gordon Cooper's Mercury-Atlas 9 spaceflight in May 1963. The Dragon Spacecraft Qualification Unit was a boilerplate version of the Dragon spacecraft manufactured by SpaceX.  After using it for ground tests to rate Dragon's shape and mass in various tests, SpaceX launched it into low Earth orbit on the maiden flight of the Falcon 9 rocket, on June 4, 2010.  SpaceX used the launch to evaluate the aerodynamic conditions on the spacecraft and performance of the carrier rocket in a real-world launch scenario, ahead of Dragon flights for NASA under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program.  The spacecraft orbited the Earth over 300 times before decaying from orbit and reentering the atmosphere on 29 June. During a meteor shower said to be the most spectacular in 10,000 years, an asteroid hidden by the meteor field strikes the Moon.  Fragments of the asteroid and of the Moon itself penetrate Earth's atmosphere and make impact.  The initial damage is minimal, though significant physical damage to the lunar surface can be seen from Earth.  Experts believe that the Moon has stabilized into a slightly closer orbit.  Then strange anomalies begin to manifest themselves on Earth, including cell phone disruptions, unusual static discharges and odd tidal behavior.  The world's leading scientists, including Alex Kittner, Maddie Rhodes, and Roland Emerson, begin piecing together evidence that suggests the moon's properties have been permanently altered because the asteroid that hit the Moon was actually a fragment of a brown dwarf; the fragment is highly magnetized and more massive than the Earth despite being only 19 kilometers across, and it is still inside the moon.  When the Moon's new, more elliptical orbit brings it closer to Earth, electromagnetic surges begin affecting the surface, causing people, vehicles, and other objects to levitate at random, worldwide.  Alex, Maddie, Roland and the rest of their team soon discover that the Moon's new orbit will cause it to collide with the Earth in 39 days, completely destroying the planet.  After a failed attempt by the United States to destroy the Moon with nuclear weapons, the three scientists plan an international mission to the Moon, where astronauts must construct a device to magnetize the Moon's core, causing it to disgorge the embedded brown dwarf fragment, eliminating the magnetic effects and restoring the Moon to a stable orbit.  Because of their unique expertise, Alex and Roland must join an American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut on the mission, which is expected to be a one-way trip. The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous – Shoemaker (NEAR Shoemaker), renamed after its 1996 launch in honor of planetary scientist Eugene Shoemaker, was a robotic space probe designed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for NASA to study the near-Earth asteroid Eros from close orbit over a period of a year.  The mission succeeded in closing in with the asteroid and orbited it several times, finally terminating by touching down on the asteroid on 12 February 2001. 3753 Cruithne ( or ) is a Q-type, Aten asteroid in orbit around the Sun in 1:1 orbital resonance with Earth, making it a co-orbital object.  It is an asteroid that, relative to Earth, orbits the Sun in a bean-shaped orbit that effectively describes a horseshoe, and that can transition into a quasi-satellite orbit.  Cruithne does not orbit Earth and at times it is on the other side of the Sun, placing Cruithne well outside of Earth's Hill sphere.  Its orbit takes it inside the orbit of Mercury and outside the orbit of Mars.  Cruithne orbits the Sun in about 1 year but it takes 770 years for the series to complete a horseshoe-shaped movement around the Earth.
Answer: 1962