Scott Carpenter, who became the second US astronaut to orbit the Earth in 1962, as America battled with Moscow in the space race, died Thursday in Colorado aged 88, his wife said.

In 1962 Carpenter became the second American to orbit the earth, piloting the Aurora 7 spacecraft through three revolutions of the earth.

Carpenter had suffered complications following a stroke in September and was in a Denver hospice when he died. His death leaves John Glenn as the only surviving member of America’s first Project Mercury space program,

“He had that worldwide perspective of having seen the entire planet,” she said, quoted by the the local Vail Daily newspaper.

Carpenter, who was born in Boulder, Colorado, was commissioned in the US Navy in 1949 and served as a pilot during the Korean War. In April 1959 he was selected as one of the original seven Mercury astronauts and underwent training with NASA, specialising in communication and navigation.

He was the backup pilot for Glenn in preparation for America’s first manned orbital space flight in February 1962, according to his NASA biography.

He was also Glenn’s link in mission control, famously exclaiming “Godspeed, John Glenn,” as the Friendship 7 rocket lifted off.

America was battling to catch up with its Cold War foe the Soviet Union, which had sent Yuri Gagarin into orbit in April 1961.

Carpenter flew the second US manned orbital flight on May 24, 1962, piloting the Aurora 7 spacecraft through three revolutions of the earth, and landing in the Atlantic after nearly five hours of flight time. During that flight, he became the first American to eat solid food in space (in the form of energy snacks called “Space Food Sticks“).

One of Carpenter’s discoveries pointed to the source of the mysterious “fireflies” that Glenn saw shining outside his window during the Friendship 7 flight. Carpenter thumped the side of his spacecraft and found that he could shake more of the sparkling specks loose from the capsule. “Scott discovered they were actually the moisture from the astronaut’s body, which was released and dissipated outside into the cold,” said Jay Barbree, NBC News’ Cape Canaveral correspondent.

His capsule landed 288 miles away from where it was meant to, leaving NASA and the USA waiting anxiously to see if he had survived.

Carpenter did indeed survive, with the Navy recovering him from the Caribbean, floating in his life-raft with his feet propped up. Although he did not go into space again, he continued his explorations, this time going down instead of up. In 1965, he spent 30 days living and working on the ocean floor during the US Navy’s SEALAB II program in the Pacific.

After his retirement from the Navy in 1969, Carpenter took on a number of business ventures and served as a movie consultant in the fields of spaceflight, oceanography and the environment. He wrote two novels as well as an autobiography, “For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey of a Mercury Astronaut,” which was co-written with his daughter Kris Carpenter Stoever.

When Glenn returned to orbit aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1998, Carpenter said the space missions that he and his Mercury crewmates flew were part of a decades-long effort that would ultimately send humans to Mars and beyond. “All these flights will one day lead to manned exploration of other worlds outside our own solar system,” Carpenter said in an essay written for NBC News. “That will not be soon. But it is inevitable.”

In a joint lecture with John Glenn 49 years later at the Smithsonian Institution, Carpenter recalled his feelings from that time:

“You’re looking out at a totally black sky, seeing an altimeter reading of 90,000ft and realise you are going straight up. And the thought crossed my mind: What am I doing?”

His wife said he loved his Rocky Mountain home in Colorado.

“After space and under water, the next view for him was looking at the Gore Range,” she said. “We’d stand at the top of Vail Mountain on a powder day thankful that we are lucky enough to live here.”

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden paid tribute to Carpenter in a statement: “As one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, he was in the first vanguard of our space program — the pioneers who set the tone for our nation’s pioneering efforts beyond Earth and accomplished so much for our nation.”

Carpenter is survived by his wife, Patty; six children, Jay, Kris, Candace, Matthew, Nicholas and Zachary; one granddaughter and five step-grandchildren. “We’re going to miss him,” Patty Barrett Carpenter told The Associated Press.

Filed under: Mercury, Gemini & Apollo