GORDON COOPER
Cooper flew a solo mission in space and set flight endurance records
Born on 6 March 1927 in Shawnee, Oklahoma, Cooper left school at the age of 18 and enlisted in the US Marine Corps. Upon his discharge, he moved to Hawaii to live with his parents, attending the island’s university before being placed on active duty with the United States Air Force. He then flew fighter jets in West Germany between 1954 and 1955 in the midst of the Cold War ahead of completing his degree in aerospace engineering. By the end of the decade, he had logged more than 7,000 hours of flight time.
But then his career took an unexpected turn. As the Space Race with the Soviet Union was in full swing, Cooper was invited to a secret military meeting in Washington DC, where the discussions were centred on putting a man into Earth orbit and returning him safely, hopefully before the Soviets did the same. Cooper put his name forward, and after a tough application process he gained his place on what was called Project Mercury, along with six others. Together they became known as the Mercury Seven. Their task was to pilot manned spaceflights, which took place between May 1961 and May 1963.
Cooper’s flight was the final one. It took place on 15 May 1963 on board the Mercury-Atlas 9 spacecraft, launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida. He orbited Earth 22 times – during which he became the first American to sleep in space – before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. There had been some potential heart-inmouth moments on the 21st orbit when system malfunctions forced Cooper to carry out some of the re-entry steps manually, but the 34 hours 19 minutes and 49 seconds he spent on board the spacecraft was more than the previous five Mercury missions combined.
Buoyed by his experience, he remained with NASA, and he ended up flying again in 1965 as the command pilot of Gemini 5 on a mission which took him and Conrad around Earth 120 times, chalking up 5,331,745 kilometres (3,312,993 miles) over eight days. It was a major victory in the ongoing Space Race since it more than overturned a record that had been set by the Soviets two years earlier with Vostok 5 – that mission had lasted 4 days, 23 hours and 7 minutes, completing 82 orbits. Gemini 5 was nevertheless Cooper’s last spaceflight.
Though he was the commander of the backup crews for Gemini 12 in 1966 and Apollo 10 in 1969, he became frustrated at not being chosen for a Moon landing mission and he retired from NASA and the Air Force in 1970. Cooper sadly died at the age of 77 from heart failure on 4 October 2004.