Astronaut M. Scott Carpenter inspects the heat shield of his Aurora 7 space capsule

Malcolm Scott Carpenter (born May 1, 1925) was one of the original seven astronauts selected in 1959 for Project Mercury. Created by the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Project Mercury was the United States' answer to the Soviet Union's space program. This rivalry eventually became the space race — a contest between the two superpowers to land the first men on the moon and return them safely to earth. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (412x640, 220 KB)http://grin. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (412x640, 220 KB)http://grin. ... May 1 is the 121st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (122nd in leap years). ... 1925 was a common year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... Project Mercury was the United Statess first successful manned spaceflight program. ... Crust composition Oxygen 43% Silicon 21% Aluminium 10% Calcium 9% Iron 9% Magnesium 5% Titanium 2% Nickel 0. ...

Carpenter was the second American to orbit the earth and the fourth American in space, following Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, and John Glenn.

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, young Carpenter returned to Boulder with his mother, then ill with tuberculosis. There he was raised by his maternal grandparents in the family home at the corner of Aurora Avenue and Seventh Street. He lived in Boulder until his graduation from Boulder High School in the class of 1943. Pearl Street Mall in Downtown Boulder Boulder (40°1′ N 105°16′ W, MST) is a city located in Boulder County, Colorado, USA. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 94,673. ... Midtown Manhattan, looking north from the Empire State Building, 2005 New York City (officially named the City of New York) is the most populous city in the United States, the most densely populated major city in North America, and is at the center of international finance, politics, entertainment, and culture. ...

Upon graduation, he was accepted into the U.S. Navy's aviation cadet program (V12a), where he served until the end of World War II. He returned to Boulder in November 1945 to study aeronautical engineering at the University Of Colorado. But, he missed his final examination in heat transfer, a required course for an aeronautical engineering (B.S.) degree. (See Carpenter's account in his biography, For Spacious Skies, p. 97.) The United States Navy (USN) is the branch of the United States armed forces responsible for naval operations. ... World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrinations, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons like the atom bomb World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a mid-20th-century conflict that engulfed much of the globe... Aerospace engineering is the branch of engineering concerning aircraft, spacecraft and related topics. ... The University of Colorado (CU) System consists of five campuses: University of Colorado at Boulder University of Colorado at Colorado Springs University of Colorado at Denver University of Colorado Health Sciences Center Fitzsimons campus of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, scheduled to open in 2007 in Aurora, Colorado... This article is in the process of being merged into Heat, and may be outdated. ...

On the eve of the Korean war, Carpenter was recruited by the USN's Direct Procurement Program (DPP), and reported to Pensacola Naval Air Station (N.A.S.) in the fall of 1949 for Pre-flight and Primary flight training. He earned his 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 on reconnaissance and ASW (anti-submarine warfare) missions during the Korean War. Forward-based in Adak, Carpenter then flew surveillance missions along the Soviet Russian and Chinese coasts during his second deployment; promoted to PPC (patrol plane commander) for his third deployment, Lt. (j.g.) Carpenter was based with his squadron in Guam. The Lockheed P-2 Neptune (until 1963 the P2V Neptune) was a naval patrol bomber and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft for the United States Navy between 1947 and 1978, replacing the PV-1 Ventura and PV-2 Harpoon and being replaced in turn with the P-3 Orion. ... The Korean War (Korean: 한국전쟁/韓國戰爭), from June 25, 1950 to July 27, 1953, was a conflict between North Korea and South Korea. ...

Carpenter was then appointed to the Navy Test Pilot School, class 13, at Patuxent River N.A.S. 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, Calif., at the Navy Line School. In 1958, Carpenter was named Air Intelligence Officer for the USS Hornet. 1954 was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Test Pilots work on developing, evaluating and proving experimental aircraft. ... The eighth USS Hornet (CV/CVA/CVS-12) was originally named USS Kearsarge, but renamed in honor of the CV-8, which was lost in October of 1942. ...

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; when Deke Slayton was withdrawn on medical grounds from Project Mercury's second manned orbital flight, 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 164 miles and an orbital velocity of 17,532 miles per hour. This article is about the astronaut. ... Deke Slayton prepares for a pre-mission test leading up to his Apollo-Soyuz flight Donald Kent Deke Slayton (March 1, 1924–June 13, 1993) was an American astronaut. ... May 24 is the 144th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (145th in leap years). ... 1962 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Alternate meaning: Mercury Seven Crew Scott Carpenter The original prime crew for Mercury Atlas-7 was Deke Slayton, however Slayton was controversially removed from all flight crew availability after the discovery of cardiac arrhythmia during a training run in the G-loading centrifuge. ... A Redstone rocket, part of the Mercury program A rocket is a vehicle, missile or aircraft which obtains thrust by the reaction to the ejection of fast moving exhaust gas from within a rocket engine. ...

Working through a jammed flight plan and five onboard experiments, Carpenter helped among other things to identify the mysterious 'fire fly' particles of frozen liquid around the craft, first observed by John Glenn. Carpenter was the first American astronaut to eat solid food in space. A balky control stick, redesigned for later Mercury missions, meant that fuel consumption was a problem throughout his flight. A malfunctioning automatic control system, at retrofire, forced Carpenter to manually control his reentry; a misalignment in yaw and decelerating thrusters (another malfunction) resulted in a 250-mile overshoot. Carpenter was located in his life raft, safe and in good health, forty minutes after splashdown, and recovered by the USS Intrepid. This article is about the astronaut. ...

Just who was to blame for the overshoot is a matter of dispute. On the one hand, Chris Kraft, leader of the team of flight controllers at the Cape, argues in a hard-hitting memoir (Flight: My Life in Mission Control, 2002) that Carpenter was to blame. Kraft's position is taken up with less enthusiasm by others in the flight controller community (see, for example, Gene Kranz). Yet at the time, the mission was considered a resounding success, in large part because the flight of Aurora 7 confirmed that backup systems—human pilots—could succeed when automatic systems fail.[1]] Others note that fuel consumption and other aspects of the vehicle operation were as much, if not more, the responsibility of the ground controllers, that hardware malfunctions went unidentified, and that 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 criticism of Carpenter's performance during his flight. Christopher Columbus Kraft, Jr. ... Gene Kranz in a more recent photo. ... Project Gemini insignia Project Gemini was the second human spaceflight program in which the United States of America sent humans into space, between Projects Mercury and Apollo, during the years 1963-1966. ... Apollo (Greek: Απόλλων, Apóllōn) is a god in Greek and Roman mythology, the son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin of Artemis (goddess of the hunt). ...

Carpenter responds at length and in detail to the criticism of his spaceflight in his 2003 autobiography.

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 project; he never flew in space again. In 1965, for Sealab II, he spent 28 days living on the ocean floor off the coast of California. He returned to work at NASA as Executive Assistant to the Director of the Manned Spaceflight 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. Carpenter retired from the Navy in 1969, after which he founded Sea Sciences, Inc., a corporation for developing programs for utilizing ocean resources and improved environmental health. Sealab is a word used to describe underwater habitats. ...

In 1962, Scott Carpenter Park in Boulder, Colorado, was named in his honor.

Books

• For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey of a Mercury Astronaut," ISBN 0151004676 or the revised paperback edition ISBN 0451211057 - Carpenter's biography, co-written with his daughter; describes his childhood, his experiences as a naval aviator, a Mercury astronaut, including an account of what went wrong, and right, on the flight of Aurora 7.

External Links

• NASA Biography