Gordon Cooper, Pioneering Mercury Program Astronaut, Dies At 77
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_ Gordon Cooper was the last astronaut to take flight during NASA&#39;s pioneering Mercury program, but he achieved many key firsts as he piloted Faith 7 capsule in May of 1963.
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John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth. The space program really takes off after this. Compiled by Tony Long.
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Nearly 300 students were spellbound at an Ohio theater when astronaut and former U.S. Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, described his 1962 space flight.  Glenn, 85, was the first American to orbit Earth on Feb. 20, 1962.
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West Virginia's Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope was the first to trace the faint radio signal of the European Space Agency's Huygens landing craft as it descended through the dense atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon and approached its never-seen, ice-strewn surface.
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NASA knows Columbia sustained damage on liftoff. But engineers' concerns get swept aside by mission control, at the cost of seven lives. Compiled by Tony Long.
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I applaud Burt Rutan and the SpaceShipOne team for their miraculous achievement of winning the Ansari X Prize. As an astronaut, I understand well the challenges they faced in reaching suborbital space.
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Mercury program astronaut Gordon Cooper was remembered Friday by NASA (news - web sites) officials and fellow space pioneers as &quot;not too bad of a pilot, but a heck of a good astronaut.
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But on that glorious day in May, 1963, Gordo Cooper went higher, farther, and faster than any other American. Twenty-two complete orbits around the world.
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Faget designed the original spacecraft for Project Mercury and played a role in the design of every US human spacecraft from Mercury to the space shuttle.
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On May 15, 1963, Gordon Cooper piloted the Faith 7 capsule and circled the globe 22 times in 34 hours and 20 minutes. It was the last flight of NASA&#39;s Mercury program, but it
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LOS ANGELES - Gordon Cooper, the last astronaut to take flight during NASA's pioneering Mercury program, has died. He was 77...
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Grant writes &quot;Leroy Gordon &#39;Gordo&#39; Cooper, one of America&#39;s first seven astronauts, died today in his home at the age of 77.
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William Siri, a biophysicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who helped lead the first American expedition to reach Mount Everest's summit, has died at age 85.
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The 90-year-old mother of a NASA astronaut aboard the international space station died Wednesday when a train struck her vehicle, police said.
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Pioneering NASA engineer Maxime Faget, who designed the Project Mercury capsule that carried the first US astronauts into space and worked on every subsequent manned spacecraft including the space shuttle, has died at the age of 83
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LOS ANGELES - Gordon Cooper, who was the youngest and perhaps cockiest member of the original Mercury astronauts and set the space endurance record that helped clear the way for the first moon landing, has died. He was 77...
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NASA, the American space agency responsible for putting a man on the moon but who also lost seven astronauts in its 2003 Columbia Shuttle voyage and seven astronauts in its 1986 Challenger take-off, says the first space shuttle mission since the disaster