Carpenter, who lost radio contact with NASA controllers during his pioneering space flight and was found in the ocean 250 miles from the targeted splashdown site, went on to explore the ocean floor in later years. His wife said he died in a Denver hospice.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration chose Carpenter and six other pilots to be astronauts in 1959 for the Mercury space program as the United States entered its space race with the Soviet Union. The only surviving member of that Mercury 7 team is John Glenn, 92, now a retired U.S. Senator from Ohio. In 1962, Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth, and Carpenter was his backup on that mission.
Later that year, Carpenter made his only spaceflight, taking the Aurora 7 spacecraft on three laps around Earth on May 24, a few weeks after his 37th birthday. The flight of less than five hours made him the second American to orbit Earth, and the experience stayed with him until the end of his life.
"I still remember what a thrill it was being up there - I liked the feeling of weightlessness, and the view I had of Earth," Carpenter told the University of Colorado's alumni magazine last year.
