Space History Photo: Cooper Egressing 'Faith 7'

After a successful mission in 1963, Cooper is assisted from his mercury capsule. (Image credit: NASA)

In this historical photo from the U.S. space agency, Astronaut L. Gordon Cooper is assisted in backing out of his Mecury capsule "Faith 7" after a 600,000 mile, 22.9 orbit journey around the Earth. He elected to remain in the spacecraft until it was hoisted to the deck of the Kearsarge, as did Astronaut Walter Schirra during the previous mission.

Each weekday, SPACE.com looks back at the history of spaceflight through photos (archive).

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