Launch from Cape Canaveral; landing near Grand-Turks-Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. The spacecraft was named Molly Brown.

It was the maiden flight of the new Gemini-capsule. For the first time, there were two astronauts on board and Grissom became the first in spaceflight history, who flew twice. The main goal of this flight was, to test the maneuverable Gemini spacecraft. In space, the crew fired thrusters to change the shape of their orbit, shift their orbital plane slightly, and drop to a lower altitude. There were also three scientific experiments, which failed partly. The first was an experiment testing the Synergistic Effect Zero Gravity on Sea Urchin Eggs. A lever essential to the experiment broke off when pulled. The second involved the photographic coverage objective. It was only partially successful due to an improper lens setting on the camera.

Interesting for the media was, that John Young had "smuggled" a sandwich into the spacecraft, which caught the problem, that the crumbs it released could have wreaked havoc with the craft's electronics, so the crew were reprimanded when they returned to Earth.

The crew manually landed their spacecraft in the Atlantic Ocean, thus performing the first controlled reentry. Unfortunately, they landed much farther from the landing zone than anticipated, about 97 km (60 miles) from the recovery ship USS Intrepid. They had to wait 30 minutes for the helicopters. On descent, the capsule shifted from a vertical to horizontal attitude under its parachutes. The change was so sudden that Grissom cracked his faceplate (made of plexiglas) on the control panel in front of him, Youngs faceplate was scratched.