Felix Baumgartner is celebrating his record-breaking skydive from the edge of space, during which he became the first person in history to break the sound barrier during a free-fall.
Felix Baumgartner stood poised in the open hatch of a capsule suspended above Earth. Twenty four miles (38 kilometers) below him, millions of people were watching on the Internet and marveling at the moment.
A second later, the he stepped off and barreled toward a U.S. desert as a white speck against a dark sky. The Austrian-born Baumgartner shattered the sound barrier and landed safely about nine minutes later, becoming the world's first supersonic skydiver.
Baumgartner's team included Joe Kittinger, who first tried to break the sound barrier from 19.5 miles (31 kilometers) up in 1960, reaching speeds of 614 mph (988 kph). With Kittinger inside mission control, the two men could be heard going over technical details during the ascension.
"Our guardian angel will take care of you," Kittinger radioed to Baumgartner.
This attempt marked the end of a long road for Baumgartner, a record-setting high-altitude jumper. He has said this was his final jump.
At Baumgartner's insistence, some 30 cameras recorded his stunt. Shortly after the launch early Sunday, screens at mission control showed the capsule, dangling from the massive balloon, as it rose gracefully above the New Mexico desert.
Baumgartner could be seen on video, calmly checking instruments inside.
Baumgartner said traveling faster than sound is "hard to describe because you don't feel it." The pressurized suit prevented him from feeling the rushing air or even the loud noise he made when breaking the sound barrier.
With no reference points, "you don't know how fast you travel," he said.
Baumgartner's accomplishment came on the 65th anniversary of the day that U.S. test pilot Chuck Yeager became the first man to officially break the sound barrier in a jet. Yeager commemorated that feat on Sunday, flying in the back seat of an F-15 Eagle as it broke the sound barrier at more than 30,000 feet (9,144 meters) above California's Mojave Desert.
The 43-year-old former paratrooper reached speeds of up to 706mph (1,135km/h) after leaping from a capsule attached to a giant helium balloon 24 miles (39km) above Roswell, New Mexico.
It took him over two hours to ascend to 128,097ft but just over ten minutes to reach the ground. After opening his parachute and floating down into the New Mexico desert for a perfect landing, Baumgartner fell to his knees and held his hands aloft in celebration.
‘When you’re standing there on top of the world you become so humble,’ he told reporters shortly after landing. ‘The only thing I wanted was to be brought back to Earth again, alive.’
Speaking later to ServusTV from his native Austria, Baumgartner admitted his relief at completing his mission, which he has previously said would be his last major jump.
‘I think 20 tonnes have fallen from my shoulders. I prepared for this for seven years,’ he said.
Almost everything went exactly according to plan for the Red Bull Stratos team, with a minor problem with Baumgartner’s helmet the only blip.
A problem with an external heater meant his visor fogged up whenever he exhaled, resulting in him activating his parachute earlier than necessary, understandably to be on the safe side, when he could not see his instruments properly during free-fall.
Felix Baumgartner addresses the media after a safe landing
In a poetic result, however, it meant the 52-year record for the longest free-fall in terms of time remained with Joe Kittinger, the retired US Air Force colonel who was Baumgartner’s mentor for the skydive.
As well as breaking the sound barrier, Baumgartner also made history with the highest free-fall and highest manned balloon flight.
‘Even on a day like this when you start so well, then there’s a little glitch,’ he said, referencing the helmet problem.
‘And you think you’ll have to abort – what if you’ve prepared everything and it fails on a visor problem. But I finally decided to jump. And it was the right decision.’
Before stepping of the capsule of his platform for his death-defying leap, Baumgartner had echoed the words of the late Neil Armstrong when he stepped on the Moon.
‘Sometimes you have (go) up really high to (realise) how small you are,’ Baumgartner said.