The countdown began at 8:30 p.m. the previous night, with Shepard waking up and eating a breakfast of steak and eggs with toast, coffee, and orange juice (the steak and eggs breakfast would soon become a tradition for astronauts the morning of a launch).
He entered the spacecraft at 5:15 am.
ET, just over two hours before the planned 7:20 launch time.
At 7:05 am, the launch was held for an hour to let cloud cover clear – good visibility would be essential for photographs of the Earth – and fix a power supply unit; shortly after the count restarted, another hold was called in order to reboot a computer at Goddard Space Flight Center.
The count was eventually resumed, after slightly over two and a half hours of unplanned holds, and continued with no further faults.
All of the delays resulted in Shepard lying on his back in the capsule for almost three hours, by which point he complained to the blockhouse crew that he had a severe need to urinate (because the mission would last under 20 minutes, nobody had thought to equip the Mercury with a urine collection device).
The crew told him that this was impossible as they would have to set the White Room back up and waste considerable amounts of time removing the Mercury's heavily bolted hatch.
An irate Shepard then announced that if he could not get out for a bathroom trip, he would simply urinate in his suit.
When the blockhouse protested that that would short out the medical electrodes on his body, he told them to simply turn the power off.
They complied, and Shepard emptied his bladder.
Because of the position he was sitting in, the urine pooled somewhat underneath his back and with oxygen flowing through the spacesuit, he was soon dried out, and the countdown resumed.

Mercury-Redstone 3 finally lifted off at 9:34 am.
ET, watched by an estimated 45 million television viewers in the United States.
Shepard was subjected to a maximum acceleration of 6.3g just before the Redstone engine shut down, two minutes and 22 seconds after launch.
Freedom 7's space-fixed velocity was 5,134 miles per hour (8,262 km/h), close to the planned value.
Ten seconds later, the escape tower was jettisoned.
At the three-minute mark, the automated attitude control system rotated Freedom 7 so the heat shield faced forward ready for re-entry.

Shepard was now able to take manual control of the spacecraft, and began testing whether he was able to adjust its orientation.
The first thing he did was position the spacecraft to its retrofire attitude of 34 degrees pitch (nose of spacecraft pitched down 34 degrees).
He then tested manual control of yaw, motion from left to right, and roll.
When he took control of all three axes, he found that the spacecraft response was about the same as that of the Mercury simulator; however, he could not hear the jets firing, as he could on the ground, due to the levels of background noise.

The secondary objective was to make observations of the ground from the spacecraft; returning the spacecraft to automatic control, Shepard found that he was able to distinguish major land masses from clouds easily, and could make out coastlines, islands and major lakes, but had difficulty identifying cities.
He had problems working with the spacecraft periscope – early Mercury capsules had a small periscope rather than a viewing window – and had to abandon an attempt to change optical filters on it after noticing that a pressure gauge on his wrist kept bumping the lever that would have activated the Launch Escape System.
Although the escape tower was long gone and pressing on the lever probably would not do anything, Shepard still did not want to risk it in case something unexpected happened.

Under automatic control, the spacecraft had developed a slight movement as it passed through peak altitude; Shepard now switched into the "fly-by-wire" mode, where the pilot used a controller to order the automatic system to fire the rockets for the desired positioning, rather than manually controlling the individual jets.
Adjusting roll and yaw, he found the pitch position was around ten degrees too
The countdown began at 8:30 p.m. the previous night, with Shepard waking up and eating a breakfast of steak and eggs with toast, coffee, and orange juice (the steak and eggs breakfast would soon become a tradition for astronauts the morning of a launch). He entered the spacecraft at 5:15 am. ET, just over two hours before the planned 7:20 launch time. At 7:05 am, the launch was held for an hour to let cloud cover clear – good visibility would be essential for photographs of the Earth – and fix a power supply unit; shortly after the count restarted, another hold was called in order to reboot a computer at Goddard Space Flight Center. The count was eventually resumed, after slightly over two and a half hours of unplanned holds, and continued with no further faults. All of the delays resulted in Shepard lying on his back in the capsule for almost three hours, by which point he complained to the blockhouse crew that he had a severe need to urinate (because the mission would last under 20 minutes, nobody had thought to equip the Mercury with a urine collection device). The crew told him that this was impossible as they would have to set the White Room back up and waste considerable amounts of time removing the Mercury's heavily bolted hatch. An irate Shepard then announced that if he could not get out for a bathroom trip, he would simply urinate in his suit. When the blockhouse protested that that would short out the medical electrodes on his body, he told them to simply turn the power off. They complied, and Shepard emptied his bladder. Because of the position he was sitting in, the urine pooled somewhat underneath his back and with oxygen flowing through the spacesuit, he was soon dried out, and the countdown resumed.
Mercury-Redstone 3 finally lifted off at 9:34 am. ET, watched by an estimated 45 million television viewers in the United States. Shepard was subjected to a maximum acceleration of 6.3g just before the Redstone engine shut down, two minutes and 22 seconds after launch. Freedom 7's space-fixed velocity was 5,134 miles per hour (8,262 km/h), close to the planned value. Ten seconds later, the escape tower was jettisoned. At the three-minute mark, the automated attitude control system rotated Freedom 7 so the heat shield faced forward ready for re-entry.
Shepard was now able to take manual control of the spacecraft, and began testing whether he was able to adjust its orientation. The first thing he did was position the spacecraft to its retrofire attitude of 34 degrees pitch (nose of spacecraft pitched down 34 degrees). He then tested manual control of yaw, motion from left to right, and roll. When he took control of all three axes, he found that the spacecraft response was about the same as that of the Mercury simulator; however, he could not hear the jets firing, as he could on the ground, due to the levels of background noise.
The secondary objective was to make observations of the ground from the spacecraft; returning the spacecraft to automatic control, Shepard found that he was able to distinguish major land masses from clouds easily, and could make out coastlines, islands and major lakes, but had difficulty identifying cities. He had problems working with the spacecraft periscope – early Mercury capsules had a small periscope rather than a viewing window – and had to abandon an attempt to change optical filters on it after noticing that a pressure gauge on his wrist kept bumping the lever that would have activated the Launch Escape System. Although the escape tower was long gone and pressing on the lever probably would not do anything, Shepard still did not want to risk it in case something unexpected happened.
Under automatic control, the spacecraft had developed a slight movement as it passed through peak altitude; Shepard now switched into the "fly-by-wire" mode, where the pilot used a controller to order the automatic system to fire the rockets for the desired positioning, rather than manually controlling the individual jets. Adjusting roll and yaw, he found the pitch position was around ten degrees too
Mercury-Redstone 3