Cooper’s Mission Helped Prove ‘Man has a Place in Space’
Cooper’s Mission Helped Prove ‘Man has a Place in Space’
“I selected Faith 7 as the name of my spacecraft for three reasons. Faith is defined in the dictionary as belief, loyalty and confidence — belief in God and country, a loyalty to organization and confidence in the entire Mercury team,” Gordon Cooper said before his 22-orbit flight. Photo credit: NASA
Project Mercury: America’s First Step in Space – Part 6
By Bob Granath
Between May 15 and 16, 1963, 60 years ago, NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper flew the longest American human spaceflight to date. The goal of Project Mercury was to determine if people could survive the rigors of riding a rocket to orbit around the Earth and, once there, perform useful work. Cooper not only demonstrated humans could, he demonstrated his expert piloting skills by performing a pinpoint landing after many of the spacecraft systems failed.
Astronaut Gordon Cooper has just completed a test run aboard his Mercury 9 spacecraft during testing in Hanger S at Cape Canaveral. Photo credit: NASA
Following Wally Schirra’s six-orbit flight in October 1962, Cooper was assigned to a 22-orbit mission that would extend to well beyond an entire day in space. The primary goals of Mercury Atlas-9 was to study the effects of an extended time in space on a human and evaluate the combined performance of the astronaut with a Mercury spacecraft.
As part of NASA’s Oral History Project, Cooper recalled his experiences with NBC News space reporter Roy Neal on May 21, 1998. The Oklahoma-born astronaut explained it was getting difficult to pick a name for his spacecraft because “good names” already were selected.
“It was a large responsibility to pick a name since it will be before the eyes of the whole world,” Cooper said. “I selected Faith 7 as the name of my spacecraft for three reasons. Faith is defined in the dictionary as belief, loyalty and confidence — belief in God and country, a loyalty to organization and confidence in the entire Mercury team.”
Gordo Cooper
Known to his friends as “Gordo,” he was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma. Cooperattended the University of Hawaii, and bought a small single-engine airplane while there. During his studies, he met his first wife, Trudy Olson 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’s license. While in college, he also was active in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, which led to his being commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army. However, in 1949 he transferred to the Air Force.
With the gantry at Launch Complex 14 towering overhead, Gordon Cooper arrives accompanied by fellow astronaut Deke Slayton, Photo credit: NASA
On completion of his flight training at Perrin Air Force Base, Texas, Cooper was stationed at Landstuhl Air Base in West Germany. He later earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering at the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology in Ohio, graduating in 1956. That same year, he and future Mercury astronaut Gus Grissom attended the Air Force Experimental Flight Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
“I was at Edwards in experimental flight tests and was one of many test pilots whose records were screened for Project Manager (in 1959),” he said. “I was very happy in my job when I was ordered to report to Washington (D.C.). No explanation or anything.”
In April 1959, Cooper, along with six other military test pilots were selected as America’s first group of astronauts.
“When we got on the program, I practically had to pinch myself every day to think that I’m really here,” he said. “It was an opportunity to really do some pioneering, because we had no idea what we’d find in space.”
Astronaut Gordon Cooper climbs aboard the Mercury spacecraft he named Faith 7. Photo credit: NASA
In November 1962, Cooper was chosen to pilot the Mercury 9 mission, with Alan Shepard selected as backup.
On March 15, 1963, the Atlas launch vehicle was rolled out of the factory and with the engineers at Convair, the rockets contractor, expressing confidence that this “was their best bird yet.” The spacecraft’s contractor, McDonnell Aircraft, modified Faith 7 spacecraft to support a one-day mission. Changes included removal of the periscope, adding a redundant set of thrusters as well as extra batteries and oxygen tanks. The added equipment and consumables increased the weight to over 3,000 pounds, compared to 2,730 pounds for Schirra’s Mercury 8 capsule.
As the launch pad gantry begins to roll back, Gordon Cooper’s Faith 7 spacecraft sits atop an Atlas Rocket, Photo credit: NASA
The first launch attempt for Mercury 9 was May 14, 1963. However, the diesel engine designed to roll back the Launch Complex 14 gantry developed a problem and would not start. Additionally, problems with the radar at the Bermuda tracking station resulted in a launch postponement.
When told of the delay, Cooper asked spacecraft test conductor Paul Donnelly in the Pad 14 blockhouse to take matters into his own hands.
“You sure you can’t come out with your little Zippo and light the fuse on this thing for us?” Cooper said.
“Nah, I guess not today Gordo,” Donnelly said.
“Faith 7 is all go.”
On May 15, 1963, the Atlas rocket lifts off Cape Canaveral with Gordon Cooper aboard. Photo credit: NASA
The next day was another story. At 8:04 a.m. EST, Faith 7 lifted off into the blue skies over Cape Canaveral.
“We have liftoff and the clock is operating,” said Cooper as the Atlas rocket climbed upwards: “Roger, feels good buddy.”
“You’re looking beautiful,” said fellow astronaut Grissom, serving as spacecraft communicator, known as capcom:
Five minutes after liftoff the Mercury spacecraft was in orbit, traveling at 17,547 mph circling the Earth every 88 minutes 45 seconds.
During his 34-hour mission in Earth orbit, Gordon Cooper photographed from the Mercury 9 spacecraft the Tibetan Lake Country North of Katmandu and west of Ihasa. Photo credit: NASA/Gordon Cooper
“Faith 7 is all go,” said Cooper.
For the Mercury 9 mission, Cooper had 11 experiments to perform. The tasks included one designed to test his ability to spot and track an object in orbit and at what distance he could see the object’s flashing light. At the start of the third orbit, he ejected a six-inch diameter sphere equipped with xenon strobe lights.
“I had a little ball that I ejected to see what the dynamics of it would be as it got farther from and closer to the spacecraft,” he said.
On the fourth orbit, he did spot the beacon and saw it pulsing. Visibility would prove crucial during Gemini and Apollo rendezvous missions.
“I was with the little rascal all night.” Cooper reported to Scott Carpenter, the capcom at the Kauai, Hawaii, tracking station.
‘A Flying Camera‘
“I was coming right in to the first time we’d ever been able to fly in daylight over the Himalayas,” said Gordon Cooper. “I managed to get some good pictures.” Photo credit: NASA/Gordon Cooper
Another objective was photography, so much so that the mission was described as “a flying camera.” Cooper’s scheduled rest period was during orbits 9 through 13. However, some of the best photo-ops was when he was expected to be asleep.
“I was supposed to power down and go to sleep,” Cooper said. “It was just at that point I was coming up over the high steppes of India and I was coming right in to the first time we’d ever been able to fly in daylight over the Himalayas. So every time I came over the Himalayas for several orbits, I managed to get some good pictures even though they (Mission Control) thought I was asleep.”
Cooper slept intermittently the next six hours, during orbits 10 through 13, but he woke from time to time and took more pictures and provided status reports into a small voice recorder. This included, Cooper, a Methodist, recording a prayer while crossing over the South Pacific.
“I would like to take this time to say a little prayer for all the people, including myself, involved in this launch and this operation,” he said.
Photo credit: NASA
“Father, thank You for the success we have had flying this flight. Thank You for the privilege of being able to be in this position, to be up in this wondrous place, seeing all these many startling, wondrous things that You’ve created. Help guide and direct all of us that we may shape our lives to be good, that we may be much better Christians, learn to help one another, to work with one another, rather than to fight. Help us to complete this mission successfully.
“Help us in our future space endeavors, that we may show the world that a democracy really can compete, and still are able to do things in a big way, are able to do research, development, and can conduct various scientific, very technical programs in a completely peaceful environment. Be with all our families. Give them guidance and encouragement, and let them know that everything will be OK.
“We ask in Thy name. Amen.”
— Astronaut Gordon Cooper, May 16, 1963
A Short Circuit
Starting with Yuri Gagarin’s Vostok flight in 1961, the Soviet Union had live television broadcasts from their spacecraft. Mercury 9 was NASA’s first attempt. At the start of the 17th orbit while crossing Cape Canaveral, Cooper transmitted slow scan black and white television pictures to Mercury Control. The picture showed the astronaut. In the murky picture, a helmet and hoses were visible.
Using a small television camera (inset), Gordon Cooper sent back the first live images of an American astronaut in orbit. NASA would succeed with better images five years later during Apollo 7. Photo credit: NASA
During Faith 7’s 19th orbit, Cooper reported an unexpected instrument reading to Carpenter at the Hawaii tracking station.
“I’d like you to relay to the Cape, a situation that I had happen and see what they think,” he said. “My 0.05 g light on my panel came on. The action that I have taken is to turn off my 0.05 g switch fuse and my emergency 0.05 g switch fuse.”
The 0.05 g instrument light was designed to come on after the retro rockets fired and the Earth’s gravity is beginning to pull the spacecraft toward landing. Cooper explained that was not possible.
“The light that tells you you’re starting to re-enter,” he said. “I was sure that I wasn’t re-entering, because there had been nothing to slow down my speed at all.”
In the Mercury Control Center at Cape Canaveral, NASA Flight Operations Director Walt Williams (standing), confers with Chris Kraft, chief of the Flight Operations Division, left, and flight director John Hodge. They are discussing systems issues that developed late in the Mercury 9 mission. Photo credit: NASA
It was a faulty indicator, and then on the 20th orbit came more trouble. Cooper lost all attitude readings. The 21st orbit saw a short circuit in the automatic stabilization and control system (ASCS) leaving it without electric power. Mercury Control managers at Cape Canaveral realized Cooper was, slowly, having a short circuit resulting in loss of Faith 7’s electrical system.
During the 21st orbit, Cooper spoke with John Glenn, the capcom aboard the Coastal Sentry Quebec tracking ship off the coast of Japan. Because of the malfunctions, many of the steps for retrofire would have to be done manually.
While passing over the Zanzibar tracking station off the east coast of Africa, Cooper calmly sized up his situation to the capcom there.
“Well, things are starting to stack up a little,” he said. “My ASCS inverter is acting up, and my CO2 (carbon dioxide) is building up in my suit plus the CO2 in the cabin, and my inverter won’t come on the line. Other than that, things are fine.”
In his 2002 book, Flight, My Life in Mission Control, NASA flight director Chris Kraft, who also was chief of the agency’s Flight Operations Division, explained what caused the electrical short circuits.
“When we got the capsule back, our engineers tore into it to see why so much had failed,” he wrote. “Cooper’s urine collection system leaked. A fine mist of urine infiltrated into all of the electronics.”
‘What we wanted to do all along‘
By switching off controls, Cooper had to fly the spacecraft on his own during re-entry.
Gordon Cooper demonstrated his piloting skills bringing his Faith 7 spacecraft down within two miles of the U.S. Navy recovery aircraft carrier, the USS Kearsarge. Photo credit: NASA
“I had the manual push/pull rods to activate the jets for attitude control,” he said. “I had eyeballs out the window for my attitude — my pitch, roll and yaw attitude. I had a wristwatch for timing. And, I had to activate each one of the relays and I’d have to manually fire the retros while manually flying the spacecraft.”
Glenn was in contact with Cooper as the Mercury 9 retro rockets fired and as Faith 7 began its return to Earth. While the astronaut in space had to work the problem on his own, all was going well.
“Real fine flight Gordo, beautiful all the way,” he said. “Have a cool re-entry.”
“Roger John, thank you,” Cooper responded.
The Mercury spacecraft Faith 7 floats in the Pacific Ocean following splashdown on May 16, 1963. Photo credit: NASA
“I was controlling the spacecraft all the way through re-entry,” Cooper said. “I had to put my drogue out manually. And, I had to deploy my parachute and the landing bag.”
”He could not have been calmer or more professional,” said Kraft.
During the 1998 NASA Oral History Project interview, Neal noted that is why the agency chose pilots as the agency’s first astronauts.
“It sounds to me like you just described why they needed test pilots to fly in the early days of the space program,” he said.
Once the hatch was removed from the Faith 7 spacecraft, a smiling Gordon Cooper greets crews aboard the USS Kearsarge. Photo credit: NASA
“It just gave me the opportunity to do what we wanted to do all along,” Cooper said. “So I was (coming down) right over the aircraft carrier (recovery ship), and the wind drifted me about two miles away.”
Shortly after splashdown, the crew of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, USS Kearsarge, placed a flotation collar around the spacecraft. A crane then lifted Faith 7 aboard; Cooper pushed the handle to blow off the hatch. The astronaut climbed out to the cheers of the ship’s crew.
As the sailors aboard the USS Kearsarge recovery ship cheer, Gordon Copper is assisted out of his Mercury spacecraft following his mission of more than 34 hours. Photo credit: NASA
Cooper’s flight lasted 1 Day, 10 hours, 19 minutes, 49 seconds, traveling a distance of 546,167 miles during 22 orbits. The astronaut exhibited no negative effects from his time in space, clearing the way for longer missions during the Gemini and Apollo Programs.
“He was healthy, happy and ready to move on the Gemini,” Kraft said. “So was I.”
One of those flights included Cooper and Pete Conrad’s eight-day Gemini V mission in August 1965.
Gordon Cooper is assisted after spending the better part of two days in a cramped Mercury spacecraft with less space than in the driver’s seat of a Volkswagen. Photo credit: NASA
When the United States began efforts to send a human into space, some believed the effects of microgravity would make spaceflight impossible. Project Mercury proved humans could not only travel into space, but also perform useful work there. By the time Mercury 9 splashed down, plans were moving forward toward Project Gemini to perfect the technology and concepts needed to “land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth” before the end of the decade of the 1960s. Project Mercury was the first step in exploration beyond Earth.
Following the Mercury 9 mission, Walt Williams, NASA Flight Operations director, summed up the successful Mercury 9 flight as well as the Mercury Program.
“When we started Project Mercury our object was to prove man’s capability in space,” he said. “I think the record shows man is capable in space and man has a place in space.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the final feature in the series of articles marking the 60th anniversary of Project Mercury. Beginning with test flights in 1959 and culminating in America’s first human orbital space missions, the program proved astronauts could be launched into space, perform useful work and safely return.
