Scott Carpenter at his home in Vail during the interview with LAUNCH editor Mark Mayfield. Photo by Toni Axelrod

In a new LAUNCH Magazine interview Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter offers a poignant look into the infancy of the American space program and answers criticism of his 1962 Aurora 7 mission. The interview recently released in the November/December issue of LAUNCH is a candid and positive appraisal by the space pioneer into the forces that shaped him to be an astronaut, what he felt during the Aurora 7 re-entry and splashdown, and his life after those momentous events.

“There is lingering controversy over Aurora 7 because it suffered from several malfunctions and overshot re-entry by more than 200 miles,” says LAUNCH Editor-in-Chief Mark Mayfield. “However, what is obvious, is that the Aurora 7 would never have made splashdown and been recovered had there not been a human pilot onboard. Carpenter was the critical factor in that success, and the events that happened afterwards only paved the way for improvements—that is the nature of pioneering a new frontier.”

The Aurora 7 problems involved a faulty pitch horizon scanner and misalignment in the yaw and decelerating thrusters that forced Carpenter to operate the re-entry sequence manually. On splashdown, recognizing his recovery by sea was hours away, Carpenter climbed through the nose of the capsule rather than risk flooding via the main hatch. Throwing out a life raft, he tethered it to the vehicle and waited until he was recovered by helicopter from the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid.

“The flight stands on its own merits,” says Carpenter in his interview with LAUNCH. “It has been said that the ‘man malfunctioned.’ I don’t believe that. Since the flight, some reports I think were malignant and disloyal to the NASA team. And I regret that and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t want to be disloyal to the NASA team, too, so I have let it go, and that’s OK.”

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