Gordon Cooper Leroy Gordon Cooper , Jr . ( March 6 , 1927 – October 4 , 2004 ) , also known as Gordon Cooper , was an American aeronautical engineer , test pilot and one of the seven original astronauts in Project Mercury , the first manned space program of the United States . Cooper piloted the longest and final Mercury spaceflight in 1963 . He was the first American to sleep in space during that 34 - hour mission and was the last American to be launched alone to conduct an entirely solo orbital mission . In 1965 , Cooper flew as command pilot of Gemini 5 . Biography . Early days . Cooper was born and raised in Shawnee , Oklahoma . He attended Shawnee High School and participated in football & track . During his senior year his father , Leroy G . Cooper , was called back into military service and the family moved to Murray , Kentucky , where he graduated from high school . He was active in the Boy Scouts of America and achieved the second highest rank of Life Scout . In 1945 Cooper turned down the possibility of a football scholarship to enlist in the United States Marine Corps , but was too late to see combat in the Second World War . After completing three years of coursework at the University of Ohio he received a United States Army commission . Cooper met his first wife Trudy while in Hawaii , and they married in 1947 . Cooper ' s grandparents were Philip Cooper , and his wife , Cora Sterns , co - owners of the first general store in Maud , Oklahoma . Philip Cooper ' s sister - in - law , Maud Sterns , for whom the town was named , was Cora ' s sister . Military career . Cooper transferred his commission to the United States Air Force in 1949 , was placed on active duty and received flight training at Perrin Air Force Base , Texas and Williams AFB , Arizona . Cooper ' s first flight assignment came in 1950 at Landstuhl Air Base , West Germany , where he flew F - 84 Thunderjet s and F - 86 Sabre s for four years . While in Germany he also attended the European Extension of the University of Maryland . Returning to the United States , he studied for two years at the Air Force Institute of Technology in Ohio and in 1956 completed his bachelor ' s degree in aerospace engineering . Cooper was then assigned to the Experimental Flight Test School at Edwards Air Force Base in California , and after graduation was posted to the Flight Test Engineering Division at Edwards , where he served as a test pilot and project manager testing the F - 102A and F - 106B . Cooper logged more than 7 , 000 hours of flight time , with 4 , 000 hours in jet aircraft . He flew all types of commercial and general aviation airplanes and helicopter s . NASA career . Mercury program . While at Edwards , Cooper was intrigued to read an announcement saying that a contract had been awarded to McDonnell Aircraft in St . Louis , Missouri , to build a space capsule . Shortly after this he was called to Washington , D . C . , for a NASA briefing on Project Mercury and the part astronauts would play in it . Cooper went through the selection process with the other 109 pilots and was not surprised when he was accepted as the youngest of the first seven American astronauts . Each of the Mercury astronauts was assigned to a different portion of the project along with other special assignments . Cooper specialized in the Redstone rocket ( and developed a personal survival knife , the Model 17 " Astro " from Randall Made Knives , for astronauts to carry ) . He also chaired the Emergency Egress Committee , responsible for working out emergency launch pad procedures for escape . Cooper served as capsule communicator ( CAPCOM ) for Alan Shepard ' s first sub - orbital spaceflight in Mercury - Redstone 3 ( " Freedom 7 " ) and Scott Carpenter ' s flight on Mercury - Atlas 7 ( " Aurora 7 " ) . He was backup pilot for Wally Schirra in Mercury - Atlas 8 ( " Sigma 7 " ) . Cooper was launched into space on May 15 , 1963 , aboard the Mercury - Atlas 9 ( " Faith 7 " ) spacecraft , the last Mercury mission . He orbited the Earth 22 times and logged more time in space than all five previous Mercury astronauts combined — 34 hours , 19 minutes and 49 seconds — traveling 546 , 167 miles ( 878 , 971 km ) at 17 , 547 mph ( 28 , 239 km / h ) , pulling a maximum of 7 . 6 " g " ( 74 . 48 m / s² ) . Cooper achieved an altitude of 165 . 9 statute miles ( 267 km ) at apogee . He was the first American astronaut to sleep not only in orbit but on the launch pad during a countdown . " Spam in a can " . Like all Mercury flights , " Faith 7 " was designed for fully automatic control , a controversial engineering decision which in many ways reduced the role of an astronaut to that of a passenger , and prompted Chuck Yeager to describe Mercury astronauts as " Spam in a can " . Toward the end of the " Faith 7 " flight there were mission - threatening technical problems . During the 19th orbit , the capsule had a power failure . Carbon dioxide levels began rising , and the cabin temperature jumped to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit ( 38 °C ) . Cooper fell back on his understanding of star patterns , took manual control of the tiny capsule and successfully estimated the correct pitch for re - entry into the atmosphere . Some precision was needed in the calculation , since if the capsule came in too steep , g - forces would be too large , and if its trajectory were too shallow , it would shoot out of the atmosphere again , back into space . 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 . " Cooper ' s cool - headed performance and piloting skills led to a basic rethinking of design philosophy for later space missions . Gemini . Two years later ( August 21 , 1965 ) , Cooper flew as command pilot of Gemini 5 on an eight - day , 120 - orbit mission with Pete Conrad . The two astronauts established a new space endurance record by traveling a distance of 3 , 312 , 993 miles ( 5 , 331 , 745 km ) in 190 hours and 56 minutes , showing that astronauts could survive in space for the length of time necessary to go from the Earth to the Moon and back . Cooper was the first astronaut to make a second orbital flight and later served as backup command pilot for Gemini 12 . Retirement from astronaut corps . Cooper was selected as backup commander for Apollo 10 and hoped for an assignment as commander of Apollo 13 . However , after a falling - out with NASA management , Alan Shepard was chosen instead ( Shepard ' s crew was later moved onto Apollo 14 , and the Apollo 13 command went to Jim Lovell ) . Having flown 222 hours in space , Cooper retired from NASA and the Air Force on July 31 , 1970 , as a colonel . Later years . 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 . During the 1970s , he worked for The Walt Disney Company as a vice - president of research and development for Epcot . After divorcing his first wife Trudy , Cooper married Suzan Taylor in 1972 . He had four daughters , Camala Keoki ( Cooper ) Tharpe and Janita Lee ( Cooper ) Stone ( both from his first marriage ) along with Elizabeth Jo and Colleen Taylor ( from his second marriage ) . Cooper received an honorary doctorate of science from Oklahoma State University in 1967 . His autobiography , " Leap of Faith " ( ISBN 0 - 06 - 019416 - 2 ) , co - authored by Bruce Henderson , recounted his experiences with the Air Force and NASA , along with his efforts to expose an alleged UFO conspiracy theory . Cooper was also a major contributor to the book " In the Shadow of the Moon " ( published after his death ) , which offered Cooper ' s final published thoughts on his life and career . Death . Cooper developed Parkinson ' s disease late in life . At age 77 , he died from heart failure at his home in Ventura , California , on October 4 , 2004 . His death occurred on the 47th anniversary of the Sputnik 1 launch and the same day that SpaceShipOne made its second official qualifying flight , winning the Ansari X - Prize . UFO sightings . Cooper claimed to have seen his first UFO while flying over West Germany in 1951 , although he denied reports he had seen a UFO during his Mercury flight . In 1957 , when Cooper was 30 and a Captain , he was assigned to Fighter Section of the Experimental Flight Test Engineering Division at Edwards AFB in California . He acted as a test pilot and project manager . On May 3 of that year , he had a crew setting up an Askania Cinetheodolite precision landing system on a dry lake bed . This cinetheodolite system would take pictures at one frame per second as an aircraft landed . The crew consisted of James Bittick and Jack Gettys who began work at the site just before 0800 , using both still and motion picture cameras . According to his accounts , later that morning they returned to report to Cooper that they saw a " strange - looking saucer " like aircraft that did not make a sound either on landing or take - off . According to his accounts , Cooper realized that these men , who on a regular basis have seen experimental aircraft flying and landing around them as part of their job of filming those aircraft , were clearly worked up and unnerved . They explained how the saucer hovered over them , landed 50 yards away from them using three extended landing gears and then took off as they approached for a closer look . Being photographers with cameras in hand , they of course shot images with 35mm and 4×5 still cameras as well as motion picture film . There was a special Pentagon number to call to report incidents like this . He called and it immediately went up the chain of command until he was instructed by a general to have the film developed ( but to make no prints of it ) and send it right away in a locked courier pouch . As he had not been instructed to " not " look at the negative s before sending them , he " did " . He said the quality of the photography was excellent as would be expected from the experienced photographers who took them . What he saw was exactly what they had described to him . He did not see the movie film before everything was sent away . He expected that there would be a follow up investigation since an aircraft of unknown origin had landed in a highly classified military installation , but nothing was ever said of the incident again . He was never able to track down what happened to those photos . He assumed that they ended up going to the Air Force ' s official UFO investigation , Project Blue Book , which was based at Wright - Patterson Air Force Base . He held claim until his death that the U . S . government is indeed covering up information about UFOs . He gave the example of President Harry Truman who said on April 4 , 1950 , " I can assure you that flying saucers , given that they exist , are not constructed by any power on Earth . " He also 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 from the ground . In his memoirs , Cooper wrote he had seen other unexplained aircraft several times during his career , and also said hundreds of similar reports had been made . He further claimed these sightings had been " swept under the rug " by the U . S . government . Throughout his later life Cooper expressed repeatedly in interviews he had seen UFOs and described his recollections for the documentary " Out of the Blue " . Memorial spaceflights . On April 29 , 2007 , Cooper ' s ashes ( along with those of " Star Trek " actor James Doohan and 206 others ) were launched from New Mexico on a sub - orbital memorial flight by a privately owned UP Aerospace SpaceLoft XL sounding rocket . Although the capsule carrying the ashes fell back toward Earth as planned , it was lost in mountainous landscape . The search was thwarted by bad weather but after a few weeks the capsule was found and the ashes it carried were returned to the families . The ashes were then launched on the " Explorers " orbital mission ( August 3 , 2008 ) but were lost when the Falcon 1 rocket failed two minutes into the flight . On May 22 , 2012 , Cooper ' s ashes were among those of 308 people included on the SpaceX flight that was bound for the International Space Station . This flight , using the " Falcon " launch vehicle and the " Dragon " capsule , was unmanned . Awards and decorations . Cooper received many awards including the Legion of Merit , the Distinguished Flying Cross with oak leaf cluster s , the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal , the Collier Trophy , the Harmon Trophy , the DeMolay Legion of Honor , the John F . Kennedy Trophy , the Iven C . Kincheloe Award , the Air Force Association Trophy , the John Montgomery Trophy , the General Thomas D . White Trophy , the University of Hawaii Regents Medal , the Columbus Medal , and the Silver Antelope Award . He was a Master Mason ( member of Carbondale Lodge 82 in Carbondale , Colorado ) , and was given the honorary 33rd Degree by the Scottish Rite Masonic body , " see List of Notable Freemasons " . Cooper was a member of several groups and societies including the Society of Experimental Test Pilots , the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics , the American Astronautical Society , Scottish Rite and York Rite Masons , Shriners , the Rotary Club , Order of Daedalians , Confederate Air Force and Boy Scouts of America . The Gordon Cooper Technology Center in Shawnee , Oklahoma is named after Cooper . Cultural influence . Cooper ' s accomplishments ( along with his widely noted and appealing personality ) were depicted in the 1983 film " The Right Stuff " in which he was portrayed by actor Dennis Quaid . Cooper worked closely with the production company on this project and reportedly , every line uttered by Quaid is attributable to Cooper ' s recollection . Quaid met with Cooper before the casting call and rapidly learned his mannerisms . Quaid also had his hair cut and dyed to match how the former astronaut ' s hair looked during the 1950s and 1960s . Cooper was later depicted in the 1998 HBO series " From the Earth to the Moon " , in which his character was played by Robert C . Treveiler . Cooper appeared as himself in an episode of the television series " CHiPs " and during the early 1980s made regular call in appearances on " Late Night with David Letterman " . The " Thunderbirds " character Gordon Tracy was named after him . In 2010 , Cooper ' s name and likeness appeared in a mock newspaper advertisement for a fictional ice pop - type product called " Rocket Poppeteers . " The ad was part of a viral marketing campaign for the upcoming J . J . Abrams film " Super 8 " , and was originally accessible only by inputting certain information via one of the film ' s affiliated websites . The extent of Cooper ' s relevance to the project was unclear .