Word: orbit
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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More than any other astronaut, Cooper displayed his bitterness at being passed over on earlier space flights. Yet when NASA doctors grounded Astronaut Donald Slayton because of a heart flutter, Cooper threatened to quit the program. After the fifth U.S. man-in-space flight, a superb six-orbit job by Wally Schirra, there were reports that last week's flight would be flown by Alan Shepard. Schirra, a close friend of Cooper's, put an end to that: he threatened to raise a public ruckus if Cooper were bypassed...
...flight went so well that Cooper, after his initial exhilaration, seemed almost bored. On his second orbit, while over the Pacific between Hawaii and Cali fornia, he dozed for a few moments. Then, on his ninth orbit, after nearly 14 hours in space, his program called for him to try to sleep. Advised Communicator Glenn: "I'm going to tell them [all other communicators] to go away and leave you alone now." Cooper pulled a curtain across his capsule window, allowed his craft to speed untended through outer space. In the silence of such flight, the weightless astronaut...
Well into Cooper's second day of flight, Mercury Control Announcer John ("Shorty") Powers proudly said: "The spacecraft is still performing in almost unbelievable fashion." And then came the crisis. On his 19th orbit, while out of radio contact over the Western Pacific, Cooper reached forward, threw a switch to dim his panel lights-and saw a small indicator glow green...
...bird watchers turned out at the Cape Canaveral pad. And as the Thor-Delta rocket rose above the southern morning, the Bell Telephone Laboratories scientists who had built its cargo followed its course with rising confidence. Satisfied at last that their latest communication satellite, Telstar II, was in proper orbit, they put through a telephone call to their space communication station at Andover, Maine. "She's all yours. Go play with her!" It was hardly the type of space spectacular that President Kennedy warned would soon be touched off by Soviet scientists, but even so, Telstar II turned...
...craft on his own, Cooper was coached from the ground by another astronaut John Glenn. The Faith 7 pilot remained in complete control until hitting the water, as nonchalant he had been earlier in the flight, when he almost fell asleep during the countdown, napped during his second orbit, and slept for around 7 1/2 hours during the night...