John Glenn 13, "Friendship 7", and had the name hand-painted on the side like the one on his F-86 had been. Glenn and Carpenter completed their training for the mission in January 1962, but postponement of the launch allowed them to continue rehearsing. Glenn spent 25 hours and 25 minutes in the spacecraft performing hangar and altitude tests, and 59 hours and 45 minutes in the simulator. He flew 70 simulated missions and reacted to 189 simulated system failures. After a long series of delays, "Friendship 7" lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on February 20, 1962. There were eleven
VA spacecraft The VA spacecraft was capable of independent flight – up to 31 hours in its last incarnation – it needed however to be combined with additional hardware (containing propulsion and storage) to achieve a longer flight duration. Three different such usage scenarios for the VA spacecraft were planned: Initially the LK-1 spacecraft, and after LK-1's cancellation the plans for Almaz APOS and the TKS spacecraft utilized the VA spacecraft. For the Almaz program, the plans envisaged two configurations for the crewed VA spacecraft: While the VA spacecraft has seen some successful uncrewed test flights, both with and without an Functional