Astronaut Scott Carpenter Great Scott

Black and white photograph of a man's head in a space suit on a white background and in the center of the button with two space capsules one on each side of the head and red text along the top edge and under the image with a blue bottom edge with white text.

This button commemorates Astronaut Scott Carpenter who was the fourth American in space and the second to orbit the Earth. Carpenter was one of seven astronauts selected for NASA's Project Mercury. On May 24th,1962 Carpenter was launched into space aboard the spacecraft Aurora 7. The goal of the mission was to corroborate the previous space flight of putting a man in orbit. During reentry a targeting error took the spacecraft 250 miles off course. There was great concern over whether Carpenter had survived as he could not be easily located after his splashdown. Carpenter never flew in space again. He sustained an arm injury in a motorcycle accident in 1964 which made him ineligible for spaceflight. He went on to work as an aquanaut for the Navy's SEALAB program.

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