Astronaut Scott Carpenter

Black and white photograph of a man's head and shoulders in a space suit on a white background and in the center of the button with a blue outline of a banner across the top with red text in it and red text under the photograph and blue text along the bottom edge.

Malcolm Scott Carpenter was born in Boulder, Colorado on May 1, 1925. H served as a pilot in the United States Navy during World War II. He orbited the earth several times aboard the Aurora 7 and became the first person to eat solid food in space before returning to earth. His spacecraft landed in the Atlantic Ocean and he was picked up forty minutes later by a U.S. Navy vessel while aboard a life raft that was stored in his space capsule.

Read more about the History of NASA buttons on the Busy Beaver blog.