On May 15th, 1963, a Mercury capsule carrying Gordon Cooper blasted into space from Cape Canaveral on a 22-orbit mission around the world. During the final orbit, Cooper informed the Muchea, Australia tracking station that he could see a glowing, greenish object rapidly approaching his capsule from directly ahead.
Whatever Cooper saw was solid and large enough to be picked up travelling east to west by Muchea’s radar. Cooper’s sighting was reported by NBC, which was broadcasting live coverage of Cooper’s flight, but when Cooper landed, reporters were not allowed to ask him about the sighting. The “official” statement was that Cooper had been hallucinating due to release of poisonous carbon dioxide from an electrical short in the capsule.
But Cooper, who is a firm believer in UFOs and later made the UN speech in which he had referred to aliens, UFOs and interstellar travel, had 10 years earlier seen a UFO while piloting his F-86 Sabrejet over western Germany.
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