Cooper, (Leroy) Gordon, Jr (1927- )

Spacesuited Gordon Cooper waits in the white room during a pause in the test of countdown procedures. Cooper's Mercury flight MA-9 (Faith 7) lasted 1 day 10 hours 19 minutes 49 seconds, the first US mission to exceed 24 hours.

Gemini 5 astronauts Pete Conrad and Gordon Cooper. They are walking on the deck of the recovery ship, aircraft carrier USS Lake Champion, after their week-long mission in August 1965.

US astronaut. He circled the Earth 22 times in Faith 7 in 1963. When the automatic controls failed, he piloted the craft manually back to Earth, splashing down within 8 km/5 mi of the recovery ship. He was also the command pilot of Gemini 5 on an eight-day endurance mission in August 1965.

Cooper was a test pilot with the US Air Force before being selected in 1959 as one of the ‘Original Seven’ Mercury astronauts. He retired from NASA in 1970. In 1989 he became chief executive officer of Galaxy Group Inc., an aircraft engineering design group.