L. Gordon Cooper

Born: March 6, 1927, Shawnee, Oklahoma Died: Oct. 4, 2004, Ventura, California

NASA experience: Cooper was selected as a Mercury astronaut in April 1959. On May 15-16, 1963, he piloted the Faith 7 spacecraft on a 22-orbit mission that concluded the operational phase of Project Mercury. Cooper served as command pilot of the eight-day 120-revolution Gemini 5 mission, which began Aug. 21, 1965. It was on this flight that he and pilot Charles Conrad established a new space endurance record by traveling a distance of 3,312,993 miles in an elapsed time of 190 hours and 56 minutes. Cooper also became the first man to make a second orbital flight and thus won for the United States the lead in man-hours in space by accumulating a total of 225 hours and 15 minutes. He served as backup command pilot for Gemini 12 and as backup commander for Apollo X. Cooper logged 222 hours in space.

Military experience: Cooper, an Air Force colonel, received an Army commission after completing three years of schooling at the University of Hawaii. He transferred his commission to the Air Force and was placed on active duty by that service in 1949 and given flight training. His next assignment was with the 86th Fighter Bomber Group in Munich, Germany, where he flew F-84s and F-86s for four years. While in Munich, he attended the European Extension of the University of Maryland night school. He returned to the United States and, after two years of study at AFIT, received his degree. He then reported to the Air Force Experimental Flight Test School at Edwards Air Force Base, California, and, upon graduating in 1957, was assigned as an aeronautical engineer and test pilot in the Performance Engineering Branch of the Flight Test Division at Edwards. He logged more than 7,000 hours’ flying time — 4,000 hours in jet aircraft.