After weather delays and launch-pad holds that left astronaut John H. Glenn, Jr. strapped inside his capsule for nearly four hours, the Atlas rocket beneath Friendship 7 roared to life at 9:47:39 a.m. EST. Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth, circling the planet three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes, and 23 seconds. The flight was not without drama. During the first orbit, a faulty yaw attitude-control jet forced Glenn to abandon the automatic system and fly manually using the electrical fly-by-wire mode. More alarming, a false sensor signal suggested the retropack clamp had released the critical heat shield; mission controllers instructed Glenn to retain the retropack through reentry as a safety measure, a precaution that turned out to be unnecessary but wisely cautious. Glenn observed the luminous "fireflies" of ice particles outside his window, ate applesauce from a tube, and reported that weightlessness was not debilitating but exhilarating. Recovery by the destroyer USS Noa came 21 minutes after splashdown, some 800 miles southeast of Bermuda. With Friendship 7, Project Mercury achieved its founding goal: orbiting a man, observing his performance, and returning him safely to a predetermined point. The mission drew a line in the Space Race; NASA was no longer merely catching up—it was competing.