- Title: Gordon Cooper
- Author: NASA
- Date: c.1959
- Condition: Excellent
- Inches: 4 x 5 [Photograph]
- Centimeters: 10.16 x 12.70 [Photograph]
- Product ID: 308605
Original photograph of Gordon Cooper printed by NASA.
Gordon Cooper, born March 6, 1927 in Shawnee, Oklahoma, was an American aerospace engineer, Air Force colonel, test pilot, and one of NASA’s original Mercury Seven astronauts selected in 1959. He piloted the longest and final Mercury spaceflight, Faith 7, in May 1963, which lasted 34 hours and required him to manually guide the spacecraft to a precise landing after equipment failures. In August 1965, Cooper became the first person to complete two orbital flights as command pilot of Gemini 5, setting a space endurance record of nearly eight days alongside Pete Conrad, proving astronauts could survive the duration of a lunar round trip. Cooper logged 222 hours in space across his missions, served as backup for other Gemini and Apollo missions, and retired from NASA and the Air Force in 1970; he later entered private business and died on October 4, 2004.