In 1963 Cooper piloted the longest and last Mercury spaceflight, Mercury-Atlas 9. During that 34-hour mission he became the first American to spend an entire day in space, the first to sleep in space, and the last American launched on an entirely solo orbital mission. Despite a series of severe equipment failures, he successfully completed the mission under manual control, guiding his spacecraft, which he named Faith 7, to a splashdown just 4 miles (6.4km) ahead of the recovery ship. Cooper became the first astronaut to make a second orbital flight when he flew as command pilot of Gemini 5 in 1965. Along with pilot Pete Conrad, he set a new space endurance record by traveling 3,312,993 miles (5,331,745km) in 190 hours and 56 minutes—just short of eight days—showing that astronauts could survive in space for the length of time necessary to go from the Earth to the Moon and back.
Cooper liked to race cars and boats, and entered the $28,000 Salton City 500 miles (800km) boat race, and the Southwest Championship Drag Boat races in 1965, and the 1967 Orange Bowl Regatta with fire fighter Red Adair. In 1968, he entered the 24 Hours of Daytona, but NASA management ordered him to withdraw due to the dangers involved. After serving as backup commander of the Apollo 10 mission, he was superseded by Alan Shepard. He retired from NASA and the Air Force with the rank of colonel in 1970.
Cooper attended Jefferson Elementary School and Shawnee High School,[4] where he was on the football and track teams. During his senior high school year, he played halfback in the state football championship.[5] He was active in the Boy Scouts of America, where he achieved its second highest rank, Life Scout.[6] His parents owned a Command-Aire 3C3biplane, and he learned to fly at a young age. He unofficially soloed when he was 12years old, and earned his pilot certification in a Piper J-3 Cub when he was 16.[4][7] His family moved to Murray, Kentucky, when his father was called back into service, and he graduated from Murray High School in June1945.[2]
Cooper went to Hawaii to live with his parents. He started attending the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and bought his own J-3 Cub. There he met his first wife, TrudyB. Olson (1927–1994) of Seattle, through the local flying club. She was active in flying, and would later become the only wife of a Mercury astronaut to have a private pilot certification. They were married on August29, 1947, in Honolulu, when both were 20years old. They had two daughters.[2][4][8]
While at AFIT, Cooper met Gus Grissom, a fellow USAF officer, and the two became good friends. They were involved in an accident on takeoff from Lowry Field on June 23, 1956, when the Lockheed T-33 Cooper was piloting suddenly lost power. He aborted the takeoff, but the landing gear collapsed and the aircraft skidded erratically for 2,000 feet (610m), and crashed at the end of the runway, bursting into flames. Cooper and Grissom escaped unscathed, although the aircraft was a total loss.[10]
In January 1959, Cooper received unexpected orders to report to Washington, D.C. There was no indication what it was about, but his commanding officer, Major General Marcus F. Cooper (no relation) recalled an announcement in the newspaper saying that a contract had been awarded to McDonnell Aircraft in St. Louis, Missouri, to build a space capsule, and advised Cooper not to volunteer for astronaut training. On February 2, 1959, Cooper attended a NASA briefing on Project Mercury and the part astronauts would play in it. Cooper went through the selection process with another 109 pilots,[12] and was not surprised when he was accepted as the youngest of the first seven American astronauts.[13][14]
During the selection interviews, Cooper had been asked about his domestic relationship, and had lied, saying that he and Trudy had a good, stable marriage. In fact, they had separated four months before, and she was living with their daughters in San Diego while he occupied a bachelor's quarters at Edwards. Aware that NASA wanted to project an image of its astronauts as loving family men, and that his story would not stand up to scrutiny, he drove down to San Diego to see Trudy at the first opportunity. Lured by the prospect of a great adventure for herself and her daughters, she agreed to go along with the charade and pretend that they were a happily married couple.[15]
The astronauts drew their salaries as military officers, and an important component of that was flight pay. In Cooper's case, it amounted to $145 a month (equivalent to $1,516in 2023). NASA saw no reason to provide the astronauts with aircraft, so they had to fly to meetings around the country on commercial airlines. To continue earning their flight pay, Grissom and Slayton would go out on the weekend to Langley Air Force Base, and attempt to put in the required four hours a month, competing for T-33 aircraft with senior deskbound colonels and generals. Cooper traveled to McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base in Tennessee, where a friend let him fly higher-performance F-104B jets. This came up when Cooper had lunch with William Hines, a reporter for The Washington Star, and was duly reported in the paper. Cooper then discussed the issue with CongressmanJames G. Fulton. The matter was taken up by the House Committee on Science and Astronautics. Within weeks the astronauts had priority access to USAF F-102s, something which Cooper considered a "hot plane", but could still take off from and land at short civilian airfields; however, this debacle did not make Cooper popular with senior NASA management.[21][22]
After General Motors executive Ed Cole presented Shepard with a brand-new Chevrolet Corvette, Jim Rathmann, a racing car driver who won the Indianapolis 500 in 1960, and was a Chevrolet dealer in Melbourne, Florida, convinced Cole to turn this into an ongoing marketing campaign. Henceforth, astronauts would be able to lease brand-new Corvettes for a dollar a year. All of the Mercury Seven but Glenn soon took up the offer. Cooper, Grissom and Shepard were soon racing their Corvettes around Cape Canaveral, with the police ignoring their exploits. From a marketing perspective, it was very successful, and helped the highly priced Corvette become established as a desirable brand. Cooper held licenses with the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) and the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR). He also enjoyed racing speedboats.[23][24]
Cooper was designated for the next mission, Mercury-Atlas 9 (MA-9). Apart from the grounded Slayton, he was the only one of the Mercury Seven who had not yet flown in space.[27][24] Cooper's selection was publicly announced on November14, 1962, with Shepard designated as his backup.[28]
Project Mercury had begun with a goal of ultimately flying an 18-orbit, 27-hour mission, known as the manned one-day mission.[29] On November9, senior staff at the Manned Spacecraft Center decided to fly a 22-orbit mission as MA-9. Project Mercury still remained years behind the Soviet Union's space program, which had already flown a 64-orbit mission in Vostok3. When Atlas 130-D, the booster designated for MA-9, first emerged from the factory in San Diego on January30, 1963, it failed to pass inspection and was returned to the factory.[30] For Schirra's MA-8mission, 20modifications had been made to the Mercury spacecraft; for Cooper's MA-9, 183changes were made.[30][31] Cooper decided to name his spacecraft, Mercury Spacecraft No.20, Faith 7. NASA public affairs officers could see the newspaper headlines if the spacecraft were lost at sea: "NASA loses Faith".[32]
After an argument with NASA Deputy Administrator Walter C. Williams over last-minute changes to his pressure suit to insert a new medical probe, Cooper was nearly replaced by Shepard.[33] This was followed by Cooper buzzing HangarS at Cape Canaveral in an F-102 and lighting the afterburner.[33] Williams told Slayton he was prepared to replace Cooper with Shepard. They decided not to, but not to let Cooper know immediately. Instead, Slayton told Cooper that Williams was looking to ground whomever buzzed HangarS.[34] According to Cooper, Slayton later told him that President John F. Kennedy had intervened to prevent his removal.[33]
Cooper was launched into space on May 15, 1963, aboard the Faith7 spacecraft, for what turned out to be the last of the Project Mercury missions. Because MA-9 would orbit over nearly every part of Earth from 33degrees north to 33degrees south,[35] a total of 28ships, 171aircraft, and 18,000servicemen were assigned to support the mission.[35] He orbited the Earth 22times and logged more time in space than all five previous Mercury astronauts combined: 34hours, 19minutes, and 49seconds. Cooper achieved an altitude of 165.9 miles (267km) at apogee. He was the first American astronaut to sleep, not only in orbit,[2][36] but on the launch pad during a countdown.[37]
There were several mission-threatening technical problems toward the end of Faith 7's flight. During the 19thorbit, the capsule had a power failure. Carbon dioxide levels began rising, both in Cooper's suit and in the cabin, and the cabin temperature climbed to over 130°F (54°C). The clock and then the gyroscopes failed, but the radio, which was connected directly to the battery, remained working, and allowed Cooper to communicate with the mission controllers.[38] Like all Mercury flights, MA-9 was designed for fully automatic control, a controversial engineering decision which reduced the role of an astronaut to that of a passenger, and prompted Chuck Yeager to describe Mercury astronauts as "Spam in a can".[39] "This flight would put an end to all that nonsense," Cooper later wrote. "My electronics were shot and a pilot had the stick."[40]
Turning to his understanding of star patterns, Cooper took manual control of the tiny capsule and successfully estimated the correct pitch for re-entry into the atmosphere.[41] Precision was needed in the calculation; small errors in timing or orientation could produce large errors in the landing point. Cooper drew lines on the capsule window to help him check his orientation before firing the re-entry rockets. "So I used my wrist watch for time," he later recalled, "my eyeballs out the window for attitude. Then I fired my retrorockets at the right time and landed right by the carrier."[42]
Faith 7splashed downfour miles (6.4km) ahead of the recovery ship, the aircraft carrier USSKearsarge. Faith7 was hoisted on board by a helicopter with Cooper still inside. Once on deck he used the explosive bolts to blow open the hatch. Postflight inspections and analyses studied the causes and nature of the electrical problems that had plagued the final hours of the flight, but no fault was found with the performance of the pilot.[43]
On May 22, New York City gave Cooper a ticker-tape parade witnessed by more than four million spectators. The parade concluded with a congratulatory luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria attended by 1,900 people, where dignitaries such as Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and former president Herbert Hoover made speeches honoring Cooper.[44]
Cooper began the tradition of NASA mission insignia with this design for Gemini 5.
MA-9 was the last of the Project Mercury flights. Walt Williams and others wanted to follow up with a three-day Mercury-Atlas 10 (MA-10) mission, but NASA HQ had already announced that there would be no MA-10 if MA-9 was successful.[32] Shepard in particular was eager to fly the mission, for which he had been designated.[45] He even attempted to enlist the support of President Kennedy.[46] An official decision that there would be no MA-10 was made by NASA Administrator James E. Webb on June 22, 1963.[43] Had the mission been approved, Shepard might not have flown it, as he was grounded in October 1963,[47] and MA-10 might well have been flown by Cooper, who was his backup.[45] In January 1964 the press reported that the Democratic Party of Oklahoma discussed running Cooper for the United States Senate.[48]
Project Mercury was followed by Project Gemini, which took its name from the fact that it carried two men instead of just one.[49] Slayton designated Cooper as commander of Gemini 5, an eight-day, 120-orbit mission.[47] Cooper's assignment was officially announced on February 8, 1965. Pete Conrad, one of the nine astronauts selected in 1962 was designated as his co-pilot, with Neil Armstrong and Elliot See as their respective backups. On July 22, Cooper and Conrad went through a rehearsal of a double launch of Gemini atop a Titan II booster from Launch Complex 19 and an Atlas-Agena target vehicle from Launch Complex 14. At the end of the successful test, the erector could not be raised, and the two astronauts had to be retrieved with a cherry picker, an escape device that Cooper had devised for Project Mercury and insisted be retained for Gemini.[50]
Cooper's wife Trudy watches the launch of Gemini 5 with their teenage daughters, Cam and Jan
Cooper and Conrad wanted to name their spacecraft Lady Bird after Lady Bird Johnson, the First Lady of the United States, but Webb turned down their request; he wanted to "depersonalize" the space program.[51] Cooper and Conrad then came up with the idea of a mission patch, similar to the organizational emblems worn by military units. The patch was intended to commemorate all the hundreds of people directly involved, not just the astronauts.[52] Cooper and Conrad chose an embroidered cloth patch sporting the names of the two crew members, a Conestoga wagon, and the slogan "8 Days or Bust" which referred to the expected mission duration.[53] Webb ultimately approved the design, but insisted on the removal of the slogan from the official version of the patch, feeling it placed too much emphasis on the mission length and not the experiments, and fearing the public might see the mission as a failure if it did not last the full duration. The patch was worn on the right breast of the astronauts' uniforms below their nameplates and opposite the NASA emblems worn on the left.[53][54]
The mission was postponed from August 9 to 19 to give Cooper and Conrad more time to train, and was then delayed for two days due to a storm. Gemini 5 was launched at 09:00 on August 21, 1965. The Titan II booster placed them in a 163 by 349 kilometers (101 by 217mi) orbit. Cooper's biggest concern was the fuel cell. To make it last eight days, Cooper intended to operate it at a low pressure, but when it started to dip too low the Flight Controllers advised him to switch on the oxygen heater. It eventually stabilized at 49 newtons per square centimetre (71psi)—lower than it had ever been operated at before. While MA-9 had become uncomfortably warm, Gemini 5 became cold. There were also problems with the Orbit Attitude and Maneuvering System thrusters, which became erratic, and two of them failed completely.[55]
Gemini 5 was originally intended to practice orbital rendezvous with an Agena target vehicle, but this had been deferred to a later mission owing to problems with the Agena.[56] Nonetheless, Cooper practiced bringing his spacecraft to a predetermined location in space. This raised confidence for achieving rendezvous with an actual spacecraft on subsequent missions, and ultimately in lunar orbit. Cooper and Conrad were able to carry out all but one of the scheduled experiments, most of which were related to orbital photography.[57]
The mission was cut short by the appearance of Hurricane Betsy in the planned recovery area. Cooper fired the retrorockets on the 120th orbit. Splashdown was 130 kilometers (81mi) short of the target. A computer error had set the Earth's rotation at 360 degrees per day whereas it is actually 360.98. The difference was significant in a spacecraft. The error would have been larger had Cooper not recognized the problem when the reentry gauge indicated that they were too high, and attempted to compensate by increasing the bank angle from 53 to 90 degrees to the left to increase the drag. Helicopters plucked them from the sea and took them to the recovery ship, the aircraft carrier USSLake Champlain.[57]
The two astronauts established a new space endurance record by traveling a distance of 3,312,993 miles (5,331,745km) in 190 hours and 56 minutes—just short of eight days—showing that astronauts could survive in space for the length of time necessary to go from the Earth to the Moon and back. Cooper became the first astronaut to make a second orbital flight.[58]
Cooper served as backup Command Pilot for Gemini 12, the last of the Gemini missions, with Gene Cernan as his pilot.[59]
Project Apollo
In November 1964, Cooper entered the $28,000 Salton City 500 miles (800km) boat race with racehorse owner Ogden Phipps and racing car driver Chuck Daigh.[60] They were in fourth place when a cracked motor forced them to withdraw. The next year Cooper and Grissom had an entry in the race, but were disqualified after failing to make a mandatory meeting. Cooper competed in the Southwest Championship Drag Boat races at La Porte, Texas, later in 1965,[61] and in the 1967 Orange Bowl Regatta with fire fighter Red Adair.[62] In 1968, he entered the 24 Hours of Daytona with Charles Buckley, the NASA chief of security at the Kennedy Space Center. The night before the race, NASA management ordered him to withdraw due to the dangers involved.[63] Cooper upset NASA management by quipping to the press that "NASA wants astronauts to be tiddlywinks players."[63]
Cooper was selected as backup commander for the May 1969 Apollo 10 mission. This placed him in line for the position of commander of Apollo 13, according to the usual crew rotation procedure established by Slayton as Director of Flight Crew Operations. However, when Shepard, the Chief of the Astronaut Office, returned to flight status in May 1969, Slayton replaced Cooper with Shepard as commander of this crew. This mission subsequently became Apollo 14 to give Shepard more time to train.[2][64] Loss of this command placed Cooper further down the flight rotation, meaning he would not fly until one of the later flights, if ever.[65]
Slayton alleged that Cooper had developed a lax attitude towards training during the Gemini program; for the Gemini 5 mission, other astronauts had to coax him into the simulator.[66] However, according to Walter Cunningham, Cooper and Scott Carpenter were the only Mercury astronauts who consistently attended geology classes.[67] Slayton later asserted that he never intended to rotate Cooper to another mission, and assigned him to the Apollo 10 backup crew simply because of a lack of qualified astronauts with command experience at the time. Slayton noted that Cooper had a slim chance of receiving the Apollo 13 command if he did an outstanding job as backup commander of Apollo 10, but Slayton felt that Cooper did not.[68]
Dismayed by his stalled astronaut career, Cooper retired from NASA and the USAF on July 31, 1970, with the rank of colonel, having flown 222 hours in space.[2] Soon after he divorced Trudy,[69] he married Suzan Taylor, a schoolteacher, in 1972.[69] They had two daughters: Colleen Taylor, born in 1979; and Elizabeth Jo, born in 1980. They remained married until his death in 2004.[70]
Later life
Cooper at an induction ceremony of the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2004. Astronauts John Young and Gene Cernan stand behind him.
After leaving NASA, Cooper served on several corporate boards and as technical consultant for more than a dozen companies in fields ranging from high performance boat design to energy, construction, and aircraft design.[58] Between 1962 and 1967, he was president of Performance Unlimited, Inc., a manufacturer and distributor of racing and marine engines, and fiberglass boats. He was president of GCR, which designed, tested and raced championship cars, conducted tire tests for race cars, and worked on installation of turbine engines on cars. He served on the board of Teletest, which designed and installed advanced telemetry systems; Doubloon, which designed and built treasure hunting equipment; and Cosmos, which conducted archeological exploration projects.[58]
As part owner and race project manager of the Profile Race Team from 1968 to 1970, Cooper designed and raced high performance boats. Between 1968 and 1974 he served as a technical consultant at Republic Corp., and General Motors, Ford and Chrysler Motor Companies, where he was a consultant on design and construction of various automotive components. He was also a technical consultant for Canaveral International, Inc., for which he developed technical products and served in public relations on its land development projects, and served on the board of directors of APECO, Campcom LowCom, and Crafttech.[58]
Cooper was president of his own consulting firm, Gordon Cooper & Associates, Inc., which was involved in technical projects ranging from airline and aerospace fields to land and hotel development.[58] From 1973 to 1975, he worked for The Walt Disney Company as the vice president of research and development for Epcot.[58] In 1989, he became the chief executive of Galaxy Group, Inc., a company that designed and improved small airplanes.[71][72]
UFO sightings
In Cooper's autobiography, Leap of Faith, co-authored with Bruce Henderson, he recounted his experiences with the Air Force and NASA, along with his efforts to expose an alleged UFO conspiracy theory.[73] In his review of the book, space historian Robert Pearlman wrote: "While no one can argue with someone's experiences, in the case of Cooper's own sightings, I found some difficulty understanding how someone so connected with ground breaking technology and science could easily embrace ideas such as extraterrestrial visits with little more than anecdotal evidence."[74]
Cooper claimed to have seen his first UFO while flying over West Germany in 1951,[75] although he denied reports he had seen a UFO during his Mercury flight.[76] On May 3, 1957, when Cooper was at Edwards, he had a crew set up an AskaniaCinetheodolite precision landing system on a dry lake bed. This cinetheodolite system could take pictures at thirty frames per second as an aircraft landed. The crew consisted of James Bittick and Jack Gettys, who began work at the site just before 08:00, with both still and motion picture cameras. According to Cooper's accounts, when they returned later that morning they reported that they had seen a "strange-looking, saucer-like" aircraft that did not make a sound either on landing or take-off.[77]
Cooper recalled that these men, who saw experimental aircraft on a regular basis as part of their job, were clearly unnerved. They explained how the saucer hovered over them, landed 50 yards (46m) away using three extended landing gears, and then took off as they approached for a closer look. He called a special Pentagon number to report such incidents, and was instructed to have their film developed, but to make no prints of it, and send it in to the Pentagon right away in a locked courier pouch.[78] As Cooper had not been instructed to not look at the negatives before sending them, he did. Cooper claimed that the quality of the photography was excellent, and what he saw was exactly what Bittick and Gettys had described to him. He expected that there would be a follow-up investigation, since an aircraft of unknown origin had landed at a classified military installation, but never heard about the incident again. He was never able to track down what happened to those photos, and assumed they ended up going to the Air Force's official UFO investigation, Project Blue Book, which was based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.[78]
Cooper claimed until his death that the U.S. government was indeed covering up information about UFOs. He pointed out that there were hundreds of reports made by his fellow pilots, many coming from military jet pilots sent to respond to radar or visual sightings.[42] In his memoirs, Cooper wrote he had seen unexplained aircraft several times during his career, and that hundreds of reports had been made.[42] In 1978, he testified before the UN on the topic.[79] Throughout his later life, Cooper repeatedly expressed in interviews that he had seen UFOs, and described his recollections for the 2003 documentary Out of the Blue.[42]
A portion of Cooper's ashes (along with those of Star Trek actor James Doohan and 206 others) was launched from New Mexico on April 29, 2007, on a sub-orbital memorial flight by a privately owned UP AerospaceSpaceLoft XLsounding rocket. The capsule carrying the ashes fell back toward Earth as planned; it was lost in mountainous landscape. The search was obstructed by bad weather, but after a few weeks the capsule was found, and the ashes it carried were returned to the families.[81][82][83] The ashes were then launched on the Explorers orbital mission on August 3, 2008, but were lost when the Falcon 1 rocket failed two minutes into the flight.[83][84]
On May 22, 2012, another portion of Cooper's ashes was among those of 308 people included on the SpaceX COTS Demo Flight 2 that was bound for the International Space Station.[83] This flight, using the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and the Dragon capsule, was uncrewed. The second stage and the burial canister remained in the initial orbit that the Dragon C2+ was inserted into, and burned up in the Earth's atmosphere a month later.[85]
Cooper's Mercury astronaut career and appealing personality were depicted in the 1983 film The Right Stuff, in which he was portrayed by Dennis Quaid. Cooper worked closely with the production company, and every line uttered by Quaid was reportedly attributable to Cooper's recollection. Quaid met with Cooper before the casting call and learned his mannerisms. Quaid had his hair cut and dyed to match Cooper's appearance in the 1950s and 1960s.[94]
While he was in space, Cooper recorded dark spots he noticed in the waters of the Caribbean. He believed these anomalies may be the locations of shipwrecks. The 2017 Discovery Channel docu-series Cooper's Treasure followed by Darrell Miklos as he searched through Cooper's files to discover the location of the suspected shipwrecks.[95][96]
Cooper appeared as himself in an episode of the television series CHiPs, and during the early 1980s made regular call-in appearances on chat shows hosted by David Letterman, Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas. The Thunderbirds character Gordon Tracy was named after him. He was also a major contributor to the book In the Shadow of the Moon (published after his death), which offered his final published thoughts on his life and career.[97]
In 2019, National Geographic began filming a television series based on Tom Wolfe's 1979 book The Right Stuff. Colin O'Donoghue is portraying Gordon Cooper. While the series was set to air in spring of 2020,[98] the first two episodes aired on October 9, 2020, on subscription service Disney+.
The 2019 series For All Mankind has Gordon "Gordo" Stevens, a character based in part on him.
Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Union. Taken over from the US Air Force by the newly created civilian space agency NASA, it conducted 20 uncrewed developmental flights, and six successful flights by astronauts. The program, which took its name from Roman mythology, cost $2.68 billion. The astronauts were collectively known as the "Mercury Seven", and each spacecraft was given a name ending with a "7" by its pilot.
Virgil Ivan "Gus" Grissom was an American engineer and pilot in the United States Air Force, as well as one of the original men, the Mercury Seven, selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for Project Mercury, a program to train and launch astronauts into outer space. Grissom was also a Project Gemini and Apollo program astronaut for NASA. As a member of the NASA Astronaut Corps, Grissom was the second American to fly in space in 1961. He was also the second American to fly in space twice, preceded only by Joe Walker with his sub-orbital X-15 flights.
Elliot McKay See Jr. was an American engineer, naval aviator, test pilot and NASA astronaut.
Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. was an American astronaut. In 1961, he became the second person and the first American to travel into space and, in 1971, he became the fifth and oldest person to walk on the Moon, at age 47.
Frank Frederick Borman II was an American United States Air Force (USAF) colonel, aeronautical engineer, NASA astronaut, test pilot, and businessman. He was the commander of Apollo 8, the first mission to fly around the Moon, and together with crewmates Jim Lovell and William Anders, became the first of 24 humans to do so, for which he was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
Gemini 3 was the first crewed mission in NASA's Project Gemini and was the first time two American astronauts flew together into space. On March 23, 1965, astronauts Gus Grissom and John Young flew three low Earth orbits in their spacecraft, which they nicknamed Molly Brown. It was the first U.S. mission in which the crew fired thrusters to change the size and shape of their orbit, a key test of spacecraft maneuverability vital for planned flights to the Moon. It was also the final crewed flight controlled from Cape Kennedy Air Force Station in Florida, before mission control functions were moved to a new control center at the newly opened Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas.
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.
Donald Kent "Deke" Slayton was an American Air Force pilot, aeronautical engineer, test pilot, and one of the original NASA Mercury Seven astronauts. He went on to become NASA's first Chief of the Astronaut Office and Director of Flight Crew Operations, responsible for NASA crew assignments.
James Arthur Lovell Jr. is an American retired astronaut, naval aviator, test pilot and mechanical engineer. In 1968, as command module pilot of Apollo 8, he became, with Frank Borman and William Anders, one of the first three astronauts to fly to and orbit the Moon. He then commanded the Apollo 13 lunar mission in 1970 which, after a critical failure en route, looped around the Moon and returned safely to Earth.
Ronald Ellwin Evans Jr. was an American electrical engineer, aeronautical engineer, officer and aviator in the United States Navy, and NASA astronaut. As Command Module Pilot on Apollo 17 he was one of the 24 astronauts to fly to the Moon, and one of 12 people to fly to the Moon without landing.
James Alton McDivitt Jr. was an American test pilot, United States Air Force (USAF) pilot, aeronautical engineer, and NASA astronaut in the Gemini and Apollo programs. He joined the USAF in 1951 and flew 145 combat missions in the Korean War. In 1959, after graduating first in his class with a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Michigan through the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) program, he qualified as a test pilot at the Air Force Experimental Flight Test Pilot School and Aerospace Research Pilot School, and joined the Manned Spacecraft Operations Branch. By September 1962, McDivitt had logged over 2,500 flight hours, of which more than 2,000 hours were in jet aircraft. This included flying as a chase pilot for Robert M. White's North American X-15 flight on July 17, 1962, in which White reached an altitude of 59.5 miles (95.8 km) and became the first X-15 pilot to be awarded Astronaut Wings.
The Mercury Seven were the group of seven astronauts selected to fly spacecraft for Project Mercury. They are also referred to as the Original Seven and Astronaut Group 1. Their names were publicly announced by NASA on April 9, 1959: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton. The Mercury Seven created a new profession in the United States, and established the image of the American astronaut for decades to come.
Mercury-Atlas 10 (MA-10) was a cancelled early crewed space mission, which would have been the last flight in NASA's Mercury program. It was planned as a three-day extended mission, to launch in late 1963; the spacecraft, Freedom 7-II, would have been flown by Alan Shepard, a veteran of the suborbital Mercury-Redstone 3 mission in 1961. However, it was cancelled after the success of the one-day Mercury-Atlas 9 mission in May 1963, to allow NASA to focus its efforts on the more advanced two-man Gemini program.
Project Gemini was the second United States human spaceflight program to fly. Conducted after the first American crewed space program, Project Mercury, while the Apollo program was still in early development, Gemini was conceived in 1961 and concluded in 1966. The Gemini spacecraft carried a two-astronaut crew. Ten Gemini crews and 16 individual astronauts flew low Earth orbit (LEO) missions during 1965 and 1966.
NASA Astronaut Group 2 was the second group of astronauts selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Their selection was announced on September 17, 1962. The group augmented the Mercury Seven. President John F. Kennedy had announced Project Apollo, on May 25, 1961, with the ambitious goal of putting a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, and more astronauts were required to fly the two-man Gemini spacecraft and three-man Apollo spacecraft then under development. The Mercury Seven had been selected to accomplish the simpler task of orbital flight, but the new challenges of space rendezvous and lunar landing led to the selection of candidates with advanced engineering degrees as well as test pilot experience.
NASA Astronaut Group 3 was a group of fourteen astronauts selected by NASA for the Gemini and Apollo program. Their selection was announced in October 1963. Seven were from the United States Air Force, four from the United States Navy, one was from the United States Marine Corps and two were civilians. Four died in training accidents before they could fly in space. All of the surviving ten flew Apollo missions; five also flew Gemini missions. Buzz Aldrin, Alan Bean, Gene Cernan and David Scott walked on the Moon.
NASA Astronaut Group 4 was a group of six astronauts selected by NASA in June 1965. While the astronauts of the first two groups were required to have an undergraduate degree or the professional equivalent in engineering or the sciences, they were chosen for their experience as test pilots. Test pilot experience was waived as a requirement for the third group, and military jet fighter aircraft experience could be substituted. Group 4 was the first chosen on the basis of research and academic experience, with NASA providing pilot training as necessary. Initial screening of applicants was conducted by the National Academy of Sciences.
NASA Astronaut Group 5 was a group of nineteen astronauts selected by NASA in April 1966. Of the six Lunar Module Pilots that walked on the Moon, three came from Group 5. The group as a whole is roughly split between the half who flew to the Moon, and the half who flew Skylab and Space Shuttle, providing the core of Shuttle commanders early in that program. This group is also distinctive in being the only time when NASA hired a person into the astronaut corps who had already earned astronaut wings, X-15 pilot Joe Engle. John Young labeled the group the Original Nineteen in parody of the original Mercury Seven astronauts.
NASA Astronaut Group 7 was a group of seven astronauts accepted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on August 14, 1969. It was the last group to be selected during the Project Apollo era, and the first since the Mercury Seven in which all members were active-duty military personnel, and all made flights into space.
On February 28, 1966, a NASA Northrop T-38 Talon crashed at Lambert Field in St. Louis, Missouri, killing two Project Gemini astronauts, Elliot See and Charles Bassett. The aircraft, piloted by See, crashed into the McDonnell Aircraft building where their Gemini 9 spacecraft was being assembled. The weather was poor with rain, snow, fog, and low clouds. A NASA panel, headed by the Chief of the Astronaut Office, Alan Shepard, investigated the crash. While the panel considered possible medical issues or aircraft maintenance problems, in addition to the weather and air traffic control factors, the end verdict was that the crash was caused by pilot error.
References
Atkinson, Joseph D.; Shafritz, Jay M. (1985). The Real Stuff: A History of NASA's Astronaut Recruitment Program. Praeger special studies. New York: Praeger. ISBN978-0-03-005187-6. OCLC12052375.
Burgess, Colin (2011). Selecting the Mercury Seven: The Search for America's First Astronauts. Springer-Praxis books in space exploration. New York; London: Springer. ISBN978-1-4419-8405-0. OCLC747105631.
Burgess, Colin (2016). Faith 7: L. Gordon Cooper, Jr., and the Final Mercury Mission. Springer-Praxis books in space exploration. New York; London: Springer. ISBN978-3-319-30562-2. OCLC1026785988.
Swenson, Loyd S. Jr.; Grimwood, James M.; Alexander, Charles C. (1966). This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury. The NASA History Series. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration. OCLC569889. NASA SP-4201. Archived from the original on June 17, 2010. Retrieved June 28, 2007.
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