Fifteen minutes in space and the first manual piloting

The flight was suborbital — Freedom 7 climbed to 187.5 km and travelled 486 km downrange without ever circling the Earth. Shepard withstood 6.3 g during launch and as much as 11.6 g on reentry.

The flight’s main purpose was to prove that a human could withstand the g-forces of launch and reentry and could actually pilot the ship — not merely ride along as a passenger. Shepard therefore progressively took manual control of pitch, yaw and roll, and confirmed the capsule handled just as it had in the simulator, only without the sound of the thrusters he was used to from training on the ground.

Through the periscope he observed the Florida coastline and the islands of the Bahamas — a colour filter he had forgotten to remove back on the pad washed out the colours, but he could still make out individual landmasses. Before the retrorockets fired, he briefly handed control back to the automatic system, taking it over again only just before reentry.