An eleven-minute recovery and a trip to the White House

The capsule came down under parachutes in the Atlantic about 486 km from the launch pad. The impact was comparable to landing a jet on an aircraft carrier — Freedom 7 tipped 60 degrees onto its side but righted itself within a minute, taking on no water.

A recovery helicopter arrived within minutes, and Shepard and his capsule were aboard the carrier USS Lake Champlain just eleven minutes after splashdown — one of the fastest recoveries of the entire Mercury program.

Though it made Shepard the second human in space rather than the first, the successful flight and recovery gave the United States a political boost it badly needed. Less than three weeks later, on 25 May 1961, President John F. Kennedy addressed Congress and set the goal of landing a man on the Moon “before this decade is out” — the beginning of the Apollo program.