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Allen Jones - Secretary, 1972. Source

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In Memoriam: Scott Carpenter Scott Carpenter, a member of the Mercury 7, died on Thursday 10 October due to complications from a recent stroke. Project Mercury was the first U.S. manned spaceflight program. Scott was backup for the Friendship 7 mission that made John Glenn the first American in Earth orbit. Carpenter became the second American in orbit when he replaced Deke Slayton, who had an irregular heartbeat, in the Aurora 7 spaceship. Scott’s flight in Aurora 7 was the only time he went into space. The five hour journey was not the smoothest. During the three orbits he completed, the temperature in the capsule reached 108 degrees Fahrenheit (42 C). A malfunction in the automatic control system forced him to take manual control before his re-entry into the atmosphere. Scott fired the craft’s control rockets seconds late and with the craft at too shallow an angle, causing him to miss the landing target by 250 miles (402 kilometers). Recovery teams took an hour to reach the beleaguered astronaut and pull him from the ocean. Receiving a congratulatory call from U.S. President John F. Kennedy, Carpenter told him, “My apologies for not having aimed a little bit better on re-entry.” Malcolm Scott Carpenter was born in 1925 in Boulder Colorado. He went to public schools there and developed an early interest in aviation. At the age of 15, he wrote a paper on why he wanted to be a pilot. He attended the U.S. Navy’s aviation cadet program and had just begun flight training when World War II ended and he was demobilized. Returning to Colorado, he attended the University of Colorado at Boulder. During his senior year, he was once again recruited by the Navy and flew in the Korean War. He later became a Navy test pilot, and that was his entree into the newly created NASA. Following his stint on Project Mercury, Scott returned to the Navy while on leave from NASA, and he spent 30 days living underwater in Sealab II, adding ‘aquanaut’ to his curriculum vitae. He then returned to NASA, where he worked on the development of the Apollo lunar landing module. Scott and his six Mercury 7 partners were immortalized in Tom Wolfe’s book “The Right Stuff.” John Glenn is now the sole survivor of the illustrious group. Godspeed, Scott Carpenter. -JF Image credit: NASA Source