Red Bull Stratos: Mission Accomplished
Austria’s Felix Baumgartner earned his place in the history books on Sunday after reaching an estimated speed of 833mph jumping from the stratosphere, which when certified will make him the first man to break the speed of sound in freefall and set several other records while also delivering valuable data for future space exploration.
After flying to an altitude of 128,100 feet in a helium-filled balloon, the 43-year-old Austrian skydiving expert also broke two other world records (highest freefall, highest manned balloon flight), leaving the one for the longest freefall to project mentor Col. Joe Kittinger.
Baumgartner landed safely with his parachute in the desert of New Mexico after jumping out of his space capsule at and plunging back towards earth, hitting a maximum of speed of 833mph through the near vacuum of the stratosphere before being slowed by the atmosphere later during his 4:19-minute long freefall.
Baumgartner’s jump lasted a total of 9:03 minutes, with millions of people around the world watching his ascent and jump live on television broadcasts and live stream on the internet.
Check out highlights of the jump at Sport Industry TV.
Baumgartner said: ‘It was an incredible up and down today, just like it’s been with the whole project. First we got off with a beautiful launch and then we had a bit of drama with a power supply issue to my visor. The exit was perfect but then I started spinning slowly.’
‘I thought I’d just spin a few times and that would be that, but then I started to speed up. It was really brutal at times. I thought for a few seconds that I’d lose consciousness. I didn’t feel a sonic boom because I was so busy just trying to stabilize myself. We’ll have to wait and see if we really broke the sound barrier. It was really a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.’
The mission was designed to improve scientific understanding of how the body copes with the extreme conditions at the edge of space.
Baumgartner had endured several weather-related delays before finally lifting off under bright blue skies and calm winds on Sunday morning.
