One of the Original Seven U.S. astronauts, Cooper, who went by his middle name, was the first to go into space twice, the first to sleep there, and the last to fly in space alone.
He learned to fly early — at age 7, while sitting on his father’s lap — and was a test pilot for the Air Force when he saw an ad for astronauts. He signed up in 1959. On his first space flight in 1963, his Mercury re-entry system failed, so he had to fly his capsule manually, and landed just 7,000 feet from the aircraft carrier that was waiting to fish him out of the ocean.
On his second (and, to his disappointment, final) flight, on Gemini in 1965 with Pete Conrad, a control system failure sent the spacecraft spinning, but he recovered and the mission set an endurance record of eight days, proving humans could survive weightlessness long enough to reach the moon. He was a backup pilot for Apollo 10, but never got to the moon himself. He died October 4 at 77, from heart failure.