Malcolm Scott Carpenter was an American naval officer and aviator, test pilot, aeronautical engineer, astronaut and aquanaut. He was one of the Mercury Seven astronauts selected for NASA's Project Mercury in April 1959. Carpenter was the second American to orbit the Earth and the fourth American in space, after Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom and Glenn.
Carpenter in 1965
The Mercury Seven astronauts. Front row, left to right, Wally Schirra, Deke Slayton, John Glenn, and Carpenter; back row, Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom and Gordon Cooper.
Carpenter and his family visit the White House. Left to right: Rene, President John F. Kennedy, Kristen, Carpenter, Scott, Candace and Jay.
Carpenter is assisted into his pressure suit in the crew quarters of Hangar S at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on the morning of the flight of Mercury Atlas 7.
An aquanaut is any person who remains underwater, breathing at the ambient pressure for long enough for the concentration of the inert components of the breathing gas dissolved in the body tissues to reach equilibrium, in a state known as saturation. Usually this is done in an underwater habitat on the seafloor for a period equal to or greater than 24 continuous hours without returning to the surface. The term is often restricted to scientists and academics, though there were a group of military aquanauts during the SEALAB program. Commercial divers in similar circumstances are referred to as saturation divers. An aquanaut is distinct from a submariner, in that a submariner is confined to a moving underwater vehicle such as a submarine that holds the water pressure out. Aquanaut derives from the Latin word aqua ("water") plus the Greek nautes ("sailor"), by analogy to the similar construction "astronaut".
Aquanaut Josef Schmid working outside the Aquarius underwater laboratory in 2007.
