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Astronaut Cooper paved the way for the first moon landing by piloting the Mercury-Atlas 9 Faith 7 Spacecraft around the Earth 22 times in 1963. Cooper made the discoveries using long range detection equipment to spot nuclear threats on Earth, a secret second part to his space mission.So once again we marvel that in 1963, during 22 rapid orbits of the Earth, the technology was so fantastic that Cooper was able to map out all the world nuclear threats and still find time to spot other anomalies
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
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 turned to 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; small errors in timing or orientation produce large errors in the landing point. 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.Comedy gold
Comment: More pictures from The Daily Mail: