Gordon Cooper receives wings
On Feb. 16, 1966, Col. Gordon Cooper, along with Col. Frank Borman and Lt. Col. Thomas P. Stafford, receive their astronaut wings from Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. McConnell.
Cooper's first flight began on May 15, 1963, when he was launched as the pilot of MA-9, the last Mercury mission. Cooper, in his Faith 7 capsule, orbited the Earth 22 times and logged more time in space than all five previous Mercury astronauts combined. During the mission, he became the first American astronaut to sleep in orbit. His mission lasted more than 34 hours, during which he completed 22 orbits and traveled 546,167 miles at 17,547 miles per hour.
Two years later, Cooper was launched as the commander of Gemini GT-5 with Charles "Pete" Conrad Jr., as the pilot, making Cooper the first person to make a second orbital flight. The eight-day mission, began on Aug. 21, 1965, and proved that astronauts could survive in space for the time it took spacecraft to go from the Earth to the moon and back.
During his two spaceflights, Cooper logged 225 hours, 15 minutes and 3 seconds. He served as the backup commander for Gemini GT-12, the last Gemini mission, and as the backup commander for Apollo 10.
Cooper attended the University of Hawaii where he received a commission in the U.S. Army ROTC. He transferred to the Air Force and was called to active duty for flight training on the main continent in 1949. He underwent pilot training at Perrin Air Force Base, Texas, and Williams AFB, Ariz. In 1950, after he received his wings, he was assigned to the 86th Fighter Bomber Group at Landstuhl, West Germany, where he flew F-84 and F-8 jets for four years. He later became flight commander of the 525th Fighter Bomber Squadron. While in Germany he attended the European extension of the University of Maryland night school for a year.
When he returned to the U.S. in 1954 he attended the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio, for two years. He graduated there with a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering in August 1956, and was assigned to Edwards AFB, Calif., where he attended the Experimental Flight Test School until 1957. When he graduated from the school he was assigned to the Fighter Section of the Flight Test Engineering Division at Edwards as a project engineer and test pilot at the Air Force Flight Test Center. There he worked on the F-102A and the F-106B test programs. He corrected several deficiencies in the F-106, saving the Air Force a great deal of money.
Cooper was called to Washington, D.C. for a "secret" briefing. NASA engineers spent an entire morning giving the 110 invited military test pilots a technical rundown on Project Mercury and what the astronauts' part in it would be. The pilots were asked later in the day to give their reactions to what they had seen and heard, and to indicate whether or not they were interested. Cooper replied that he was definitely sold on the program and that he very much wanted to become