National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Astronaut. He is remembered as the second American to orbit the Earth and the fourth American in space, following astronauts Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom and John Glenn. Born Malcolm Scott Carpenter, he moved with his parents shortly after his birth to New York City, New York, where his father had been awarded a postdoctoral chemist research post at Columbia University. At the age of 2, he returned to Boulder with his mother, who was ill with tuberculosis, and was raised by his maternal grandparents. After graduating from Boulder High School in 1943, he entered the V-12 Navy College Training Program as an aviation cadet and spent the remainder of the war in training without seeing any combat action. He was released from active duty at the end of World War II and returned to Boulder to study aeronautical engineering at the University of Boulder but did not graduate at that time (he subsequently received his Bachelor of Science degree after his Mercury space flight). He was then recruited by Navy's Direct Procurement Program on the eve of the Korean War, and reported to Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida in the fall of 1949 for pre-flight and primary flight training, earning his aviator wings in April 1951. On his first deployed assignment, he flew Lockheed P2V Neptune aircraft on reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare missions during the Korean War. On his second deployment to Adak, Alaska, he flew surveillance missions along the Soviet and Chinese coasts and for his third deployment, he was based with his squadron in the Pacific Island of Guam. In 1954 he was appointed to the US Naval Test Pilot School, class 13, at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, serving until 1957 as a test pilot in the Electronics Test Division. He was then assigned to the Navy Line School in Monterey, California until 1958, when he became the Air Intelligence Officer for the USS Hornet. In 1959 he was selected as one of the seven astronauts for NASA's Project Mercury program, serving as backup pilot for John Glenn, who flew the first U.S. orbital mission aboard Friendship 7 in February 1962. When astronaut Deke Slayton was withdrawn on medical grounds from Project Mercury's second manned orbital flight (to be titled Delta 7), he was assigned to replace him. On May 24, 1962 he flew into space, atop the Mercury-Atlas 7 rocket for a three-orbit science mission that lasted nearly five hours, attaining a maximum altitude of 164 miles and an orbital velocity of 17,532 miles per hour. He was the first American astronaut to eat solid food 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 program, he sustained a medically grounding injury to his left arm in a motorbike accident. He failed to regain mobility in his arm after two surgeries (in 1964 and 1967), and he was ruled ineligible for spaceflight. In 1965 he spent 28 days living on the ocean floor off the coast of California for SEALAB II, followed with a NASA position as the Executive Assistant to the Director of the Manned Spacecraft Center. In 1967 he returned to the Navy's Deep Submergence Systems Project based in Bethesda, Maryland, as a Director of Aquanaut Operations for SEALAB III, where he helped to develop underwater training to help astronauts with future spacewalks. He resigned from NASA in August 1967 and retired from the US Navy two years later with 25 years of active service and the rank of commander. Among his military honors and awards include the Navy Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. After his retirement, he founded Sea Sciences, Inc., a corporation for developing programs for utilizing ocean resources and improving environmental health. Other awards he received include the University of Colorado Recognition Medal, the Collier Trophy, the New York City Gold Medal of Honor, the Elisha Kent Kane Medal, the Ustica Gold Trident, The Boy Scouts of America Silver Buffalo Award, and the 1995 Academy of Underwater Arts and Sciences New Orleans Grand Isle Award for Distinguished Service. He was also awarded seven honorary degrees. He wrote two underwater techno-thriller novels, "The Steel Albatross" (1990) and a sequel "Deep Flight" (1994). In 2003 his memoir, "For Spacious Skies," which he co-authored with his daughter Kristen Stoever, was published. The Scott Carpenter Space Analog Station was placed on the ocean floor in 1997 and 1998 and was named in honor of his SEALAB work in the 1960s. He died of complications from a stroke at the age of 88. Upon his death, John Glenn became the last living member of the Mercury Seven.