'Cooper's Treasure': NASA smackdown! Former Apollo 13 flight director tells ship wreck hunter Darell Miklos to get lost

close

Video

Discovery show follows astronaut's treasure hunt from space

Historic astronaut Gordon Cooper made an incredible discovery during his time in space, anomalies he believed were shipwrecks. Before he passed away, he created a treasure map from space. Fox’s Laura Ingle sits down with his longtime friend, who says he gave him his maps to fulfill his explorations

Darrell Miklos was reaching a dead end on his hunt for riches on Tuesday's second episode of "Cooper's Treasure" on the Discovery Channel.

On the new show, Miklos, who knew the late Gordon "Gordo" Cooper, one of NASA's seven original Gemini astronauts, said that Cooper had located various shipwrecks from low Earth orbit.

Cooper left Miklos maps and other information about possible sites and the adventurer was determined to use it to find long-lost treasure.

On Tuesday, viewers saw Miklos visiting Cooper's widow Susan, who let him look through Cooper's old files, where Darrell found a copy of a flight map and voice data recordings from the astronaut's 1963 space capsule orbit around the earth.

"This is huge!" Darrell exulted.

After listening to the audio, Darrell was convinced that when Cooper went silent on his flight, it could have been when he was looking at shipwrecks and writing down their coordinates from space.

Miklos set up a meeting with Gene Kranz, former flight of director at NASA, who famously directed the Mission Control team to save the crew of Apollo 13.

The fortune hunter hoped Kranz could tell him what Cooper might have been doing during radio silence in his Mercury 9 Faith 7 flight.

Kranz, 83, explained Cooper's main mission had been to test how long a human could go into orbit.

Miklos told Kranz that his friend Cooper had observed shipwrecks from space—and also quizzed the NASA legend on if the astronaut had been on a mission to pinpoint nuclear threats.

"I know nothing about that," Kranz snapped. "That's not what I came here to do. I think it's time to move on."

Miklos left the meeting in misery, telling cameras, "I think he thought I was there for a different reason and when I tried to steer it in the direction in which I wanted it to go,  there was no way of getting any information out of him, even if he knew. He wasn't going to risk his reputation.

"I definitely hit a nerve. Seeing him shut down like that tells me that I'm probably getting into dangerous territory. After getting shut down by Gene Kranz, I'm kind of at a dead end here and time is of the essence."

Miklos realized he had to beg his dad Roger, who mentored him in treasure hunting, for the master chart Cooper had given him.

Despite their strained relationship, Roger finally agreed to give him the chart which he claimed was worth millions.

Later, Miklos set out off the coast of Florida on his boat to search for a supposed wreck Gordon identified on the chart.

When he dived down, Miklos was thrilled to find a shipwreck based on Cooper's information—even if it was a modern one instead of a Spanish galleon.

There was no treasure to be found, but Miklos promised, "This is just the beginning."