The launch was originally scheduled for September 28, 1962, but was delayed due of a malfunctioning fuel control valve. Launch from Cape Canaveral; landing about 275 miles northeast of Midway Island (for the first time in the Pacific Ocean).

Walter Schirra performed several tests needed for longer, more complex flights. He first took photos during a spaceflight with a Hasselblad camera, and he checked the manual-proportional mode of the spacecraft control, although the capsule had an automatic stabilization and control system that was used for most of the time, including a drifting flight. He also made a night-yaw maneuver, experimental star observations and a small test to know the effects of microgravity on orientation. A dialogue between Walter Schirra and CapCom John Glenn could be listened via radio and television by much of the Western world.

All in all, it was a nearly perfect mission, only a malfunctioning system at the beginning, when telemetered signals showed an unexpected clockwise roll that was quite soon controlled and stabilized. Some problems at the beginning of the mission with the heat in the spacesuit of Walter Schirra also occurred, but the temperature became more comfortable with time.

The landing was only 4.5 miles (7.2 km) from the recovery ship USS Kearsarge.