Scott Carpenter Malcolm Scott Carpenter ( May 1 , 1925 – October 10 , 2013 ) was an American test pilot , 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 to orbit the Earth and the fourth American in space , following Alan Shepard , Gus Grissom , and John Glenn . Early life . Born in Boulder , Colorado , Carpenter moved to New York City with his parents Marion Scott Carpenter and Florence [ " née " Noxon ] Carpenter for the first two years of his life . His father had been awarded a postdoctoral research post at Columbia University . In the summer of 1927 , Scott returned to Boulder with his mother , then ill with tuberculosis . He was raised by his maternal grandparents in the family home at the corner of Aurora Avenue and Seventh Street , until his graduation from Boulder High School in 1943 . Naval aviator . Upon graduation , he was accepted into the V - 12 Navy College Training Program as an aviation cadet ( V - 12a ) , where he trained until the end of World War II . The war ended before he was able to finish training and receive an overseas assignment , so the Navy released him from active duty . He returned to Boulder in November 1945 to study aeronautical engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder . While at Colorado he joined Delta Tau Delta International Fraternity . At the end of his senior year , he missed the final examination in heat transfer , leaving him one requirement short of a degree . After his Mercury flight , the university granted him the degree on grounds that , " His subsequent training as an Astronaut has more than made up for the deficiency in the subject of heat transfer . " On the eve of the Korean War , Carpenter was recruited by the United States Navy ' s Direct Procurement Program ( DPP ) , and reported to Naval Air Station Pensacola , Florida in the fall of 1949 for pre - flight and primary flight training . He earned his aviator wings on April 19 , 1951 , in Corpus Christi , Texas . During his first tour of duty , on his first deployment , Carpenter flew Lockheed P2V Neptunes for Patrol Squadron Six ( VP - 6 ) on reconnaissance and anti - submarine warfare ( ASW ) missions during the Korean War . Forward - based in Adak , Alaska , Carpenter then flew surveillance missions along the Soviet and Chinese coasts during his second deployment ; designated as PPC ( patrol plane commander ) for his third deployment , LTJG Carpenter was based with his squadron in [ [ Guam . Carpenter was then appointed to the [ [ United States Naval Test Pilot School ] ] , class 13 , at [ [ NAS Patuxent River ] ] , Maryland in 1954 . He continued at Patuxent until 1957 , working as a test pilot in the Electronics Test Division ; his next tour of duty was spent in Monterey , California , at the Navy Line School . In 1958 , Carpenter was named [ [ Air Intelligence Officer ] ] for the . NASA career . [ [ File : Carpenter in White Room - GPN - 2000 - 001442 . jpg | thumb | left | 250px | Carpenter inspects the honeycomb protective material on the main pressure bulkhead of his " Aurora 7 " spacecraft in 1962 . ] ] After being chosen for Project Mercury in 1959 , Carpenter served as backup pilot for [ [ John Glenn ] ] , who flew the first U . S . orbital mission aboard " [ [ Friendship 7 ] ] " in February 1962 . When [ [ Deke Slayton ] ] was withdrawn on medical grounds from Project Mercury ' s second manned orbital flight ( to be titled " Delta 7 " ) , Carpenter was assigned to replace him . He flew into space on May 24 , 1962 , atop the [ [ Mercury - Atlas 7 ] ] [ [ rocket ] ] for a three - orbit science mission that lasted nearly five hours . His " Aurora 7 " spacecraft attained a maximum altitude of and an orbital velocity of . [ [ File : Scott - Carpenter recovery NASA . jpg | thumb | 250px | Carpenter in a water egress training exercise before his [ [ Mercury - Atlas 7 ] ] mission ] ] Working through five onboard experiments dictated by the flight plan , Carpenter helped , among other things , to identify the mysterious ' fireflies ' ( which he renamed ' frostflies ' , as they were in reality particles of frozen liquid around the craft ) , first observed by Glenn during [ [ Mercury - Atlas 6 | MA - 6 ] ] . Carpenter was the first American astronaut to eat solid food in space . Carpenter ' s performance in space was the subject of criticism and controversy . While one source has Christopher C . Kraft ( [ [ Chris Kraft ] ] ) , directing the flight from Cape Canaveral , considering Carpenter ' s " mission the most successful to date ; everything had gone perfectly except for some overexpenditure of fuel . " The " New York Times " reported in its obituary for Carpenter that Kraft was angry because Carpenter was not paying attention to his instruments and ignoring instructions from Mission Control . Kraft opposed Carpenter ' s assignment to future space missions . Unnoticed by ground control or pilot , however , this " overexpenditure of fuel " was caused by an intermittently malfunctioning pitch horizon scanner ( PHS ) that later malfunctioned at reentry . Still , NASA later reported that Carpenter had : " exercised his manual controls with ease in a number of [ required ] spacecraft maneuvers and had made numerous and valuable observations in the interest of space science . . . . By the time he drifted near Hawaii on the third pass , Carpenter had successfully maintained more than 40 percent of his fuel in both the automatic and the manual tanks . According to mission rules , this ought to be quite enough hydrogen peroxide , reckoned Kraft , to thrust the capsule into the retrofire attitude , hold it , and then to reenter the atmosphere using either the automatic or the manual control system . " At the retrofire event , the pitch horizon scanner malfunctioned once more , forcing Carpenter to manually control his reentry , which caused him to overshoot the planned splashdown point by . ( " The malfunction of the pitch horizon scanner circuit [ a component of the automatic control system ] dictated that the pilot manually control the spacecraft attitudes during this event . " ) The PHS malfunction jerked the spacecraft off in yaw by 25 degrees to the right , accounting for of the overshoot ; the delay caused by the automatic sequencer required Carpenter to fire the retrorockets manually . This effort took two pushes of the override button and accounted for another 15 to of the overshoot . The loss of thrust in the ripple pattern of the retros added another , producing a overshoot . During reentry , there was a great deal of concern over whether Carpenter had actually survived , since he splashed down 250 miles off course . Forty minutes after splashdown , Carpenter was located in his life raft , safe and in good health by Maj . Fred Brown under the command of the [ [ Puerto Rico Air National Guard ] ] , and recovered three hours later by the . Postflight analysis described the PHS malfunction as " mission critical " but noted that the pilot " adequately compensated " for " this anomaly . . . in subsequent inflight procedures " , confirming that backup systems — human pilots — could succeed when automatic systems fail . Some memoirs have revived the simmering controversy over who or what , exactly , was to blame for the overshoot , suggesting , for example , that Carpenter was distracted by the science and engineering experiments dictated by the flight plan and by the well - reported fireflies phenomenon . Yet fuel consumption and other aspects of the vehicle operation were , during Project Mercury , as much , if not more , the responsibility of the ground controllers . Moreover , hardware malfunctions went unidentified , while organizational tensions between the astronaut office and the flight controller office — tensions that NASA did not resolve until the later Gemini and Apollo programs — may account for much of the latter - day criticism of Carpenter ' s performance during his flight . Carpenter never flew another mission in space . After taking a leave of absence from the astronaut corps in the fall of 1963 to train for and participate in the Navy ' s [ [ SEALAB | SEALAB program ] ] , Carpenter sustained a medically grounding injury to his left arm in a motorbike accident . After failing to regain mobility in his arm after two surgical interventions ( in 1964 and 1967 ) , Carpenter was ruled ineligible for spaceflight . He resigned from NASA in August 1967 . He spent the last part of his NASA career developing underwater training to help astronauts with future spacewalks . Ocean research . In July 1964 in Bermuda , Carpenter sustained a grounding injury from a motorbike accident while on leave from NASA to train for the Navy ' s [ [ SEALAB ( United States Navy ) | SEALAB ] ] project . In 1965 , for SEALAB II , he spent 28 days living on the ocean floor off the coast of California . During the SEALAB II mission , Carpenter ' s right index finger was wounded by the toxic spines of a [ [ scorpion fish ] ] . He returned to work at NASA as Executive Assistant to the Director of the Manned Spacecraft Center , then returned to the Navy ' s [ [ Deep Submergence Systems Project ] ] in 1967 , based in Bethesda , Maryland , as a Director of Aquanaut Operations for SEALAB III . In the aftermath of aquanaut [ [ Berry L . Cannon ] ] ' s death while attempting to repair a leak in SEALAB III , Carpenter volunteered to dive down to SEALAB and help return it to the surface , although SEALAB was ultimately salvaged in a less hazardous way . Carpenter retired from the Navy in 1969 , after which he founded Sea Sciences , Inc . , a corporation for developing programs for utilizing ocean resources and improving environmental health . Personal life . Carpenter was married four times and divorced three . He married Rene Louise Price in 1948 . In 1972 , he married Maria Roach , daughter of film producer [ [ Hal Roach ] ] . He married Barbara Curtin in 1988 and divorced several years later . He married Patty Barrett in 1999 . He had four children from his first marriage : Marc Scott , Kristen Elaine , Candace Noxon , and Robyn Jay . He also had two children from his second marriage : Matthew Scott and filmmaker [ [ Nicholas Carpenter | Nicholas Andre ] ] , and one child from his third marriage , Zachary Scott . Carpenter had a stroke and entered The Denver Hospice Inpatient Care Center at [ [ Lowry , Denver | Lowry ] ] where he died on October 10 , 2013 . He was 88 and was survived by his wife , Patty ; four sons , Jay , Matthew , Nicholas , and Zachary ; two daughters , Kristen Stoever and Candace Carpenter ; a granddaughter ; and five step - grandchildren . One son , Marc , predeceased him . When Carpenter died , [ [ John Glenn ] ] became the last living member of the Mercury Seven . Honors and awards . Carpenter received : In 1962 , Boulder community leaders dedicated Scott Carpenter Park and Pool in honor of native son turned Mercury astronaut . The Aurora 7 Elementary School , also in Boulder , was named for Carpenter ' s spacecraft . Scott Carpenter Middle School in [ [ Westminster , Colorado ] ] , was named in his honor , as was M . Scott Carpenter Elementary School in [ [ Old Bridge , New Jersey ] ] . The [ [ Scott Carpenter Space Analog Station ] ] was placed on the ocean floor in 1997 and 1998 . It was named in honor of his SEALAB work in the 1960s . In popular culture . Speaking from the blockhouse at the launch of " Friendship 7 " , Carpenter , John Glenn ' s backup pilot , said " Godspeed , John Glenn , " as Glenn rose off the launch pad to begin his first U . S . orbital mission on February 20 , 1962 . This quote was included in the voiceovers of the teaser trailer for the 2009 " Star Trek " film . The audio phrase is used in [ [ Kenny G ] ] ' s " Auld Lang Syne " ( The Millennium Mix ) . It is also used as a part of an audio introduction for the [ [ Ian Brown ] ] song " My Star " . Less officially , Carpenter has been reported to add , sarcastically , " Remember , John , this was built by the low bidder " . This quote is sometimes improperly attributed to John Glenn . In the 1983 film , " The Right Stuff " , Carpenter was played by [ [ Charles Frank ] ] . Although his appearance was relatively minor , the film played up Carpenter ' s friendship with [ [ John Glenn ] ] , as played by Ed Harris . This film is based on the book of the same name by [ [ Tom Wolfe ] ] . The character of [ [ Scott Tracy ] ] in the " Thunderbirds " television series was named after him . His recovery is referred to in the " Peanuts " comic strip of June 28 , 1962 , after [ [ Linus van Pelt | Linus ' ] ] [ [ security blanket ] ] is rescued under similar circumstances . External links . [ [ Category : 1925 births ] ] [ [ Category : 2013 deaths ] ] [ [ Category : 1962 in spaceflight ] ] [ [ Category : American astronauts ] ] [ [ Category : American autobiographers ] ] [ [ Category : American military personnel of the Korean War ] ] [ [ Category : American test pilots ] ] [ [ Category : Aquanauts ] ] [ [ Category : Aviators from Colorado ] ] [ [ Category : Collier Trophy recipients ] ] [ [ Category : Mercury program ] ] [ [ Category : People from Boulder , Colorado ] ] [ [ Category : Recipients of the Distinguished Flying Cross ( United States ) ] ] [ [ Category : Recipients of the Legion of Merit ] ] [ [ Category : Recipients of the NASA Distinguished Service Medal ] ] [ [ Category : Rehoboth Carpenter family ] ] [ [ Category : United States Astronaut Hall of Fame inductees ] ] [ [ Category : United States Navy astronauts ] ] [ [ Category : United States Naval Aviators ] ] [ [ Category : United States Navy officers ] ] [ [ Category : United States Naval Test Pilot School alumni ] ] [ [ Category : University of Colorado alumni ] ] [ [ Category : Writers from Colorado ] ] [ [ nds : Malcolm Scott Carpenter ] ]