and focused instead on the enhancements made to his Mercury capsule. The numerous added equipment and consumables for the day-long mission boosted the weight of Faith 7 considerably; it now weighed over 3,000 lbs.

On March 15, the Atlas was rolled out of the factory a second time and passed tests with flying colors; Convair engineers expressed confidence that this "was their best bird yet." The booster actuators were offset slightly to prevent a recurrence of the liftoff roll transient that occurred on Mercury-Atlas 8. Several minor modifications