Scott Carpenter, U.S. astronaut, dies at 88
DENVER — Scott Carpenter conquered the heights of space, the depths of the ocean, and the darkness of fear. He was the second American to orbit the Earth.
“Conquering of fear is one of life’s greatest pleasures and it can be done a lot of different places,” he said.
His wife, Patty Barrett, said Carpenter died Thursday in a Denver hospice of complications from a September stroke. He was 88.
Carpenter followed John Glenn into orbit, and it was Carpenter who gave him the historic send-off, “godspeed John Glenn.” The two were the last survivors of the famed original Mercury 7 astronauts of the early 1960s. Glenn is the only one left alive.
He never went back in space, but his explorations continued. In 1965, he spent 30 days under the ocean off the coast of California as part of the Navy’s SeaLab II program.
