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On May 15, 1963, NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper launched on the sixth and final crewed flight of the Mercury Program. This was also the last time a NASA astronaut launched on a solo mission to space.
Cooper lifted off from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas rocket booster. He rode inside a capsule called Faith 7, which he piloted for 22 orbits around the Earth. The entire mission lasted 34 hours and 20 minutes and was the longest flight of the Mercury program.
Faith 7: Gordon Cooper’s 1963 Mercury-Atlas 9 Launch in Pictures
NASA Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper climbs inside his Faith 7 spacecraft for a launch on May 15, 1963 on the final Mercury program flight. (Image credit: NASA)Cooper performed 11 experiments in orbit. One of them involved deploying a flashing ball in space and tracking it. Cooper also became the first astronaut to sleep in space.
When it came time to head home, Faith 7 started having some problems. It started giving faulty readings, and NASA decided that the auto-pilot system could not longer be trusted. So, Cooper had to pilot it manually. This made him the first astronaut manually fly a space capsule for the entire reentry process.
Not only was Cooper’s landing smooth, but it was also the most accurate landing in the history of the Mercury program. He splashed down just 4 miles away from the recovery ship that was waiting for him in the Pacific Ocean.
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Hanneke Weitering is an editor at Space.com with 10 years of experience in science journalism. She has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.
