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
Mercury-Atlas 7 sun at orbit sunset. At dawn of the third and final orbit, Carpenter inadvertently bumped his hand against the inside wall of the cabin and solved a mystery from the previous flight. The resulting bright shower of particles outside the spacecraft - what John Glenn had called "fireflies" - turned out to be ice particles shaken loose from the spacecraft's exterior. Near the end of the flight, Carpenter found that by banging his hand against the wall of the capsule, he could shake more "fireflies" loose. At first, it was thought that the particles could be marker dye or shark