JNN 15 Oct 2012 Mexico : Felix Baumgartner has broken the record for highest-ever sky dive, and also became the first man to intentionally break the sound barrier after jumping from a capsule positioned in the stratosphere – nearly 39 kilometers in the air.
Austrian extreme athlete and skydiver Felix Baumgartner made a record-breaking free fall from a capsule 24 miles (38,400 meters) above Roswell in New Mexico, the U.S., on Sunday, becoming the first skydiver to break the sound barrier.
The 43-year-old former military parachutist lifted his arms in victory after landing in eastern New Mexico desert minutes after jumping from the stratosphere.
“Mission accomplished!” he wrote on Twitter as soon as he landed.
Baumgartner took off in a pressurized capsule carried by a 55- story ultra-thin helium balloon in a more than two hours journey into the stratosphere, and then he jumped into a near vacuum with no oxygen to begin the fastest, farthest free fall from the highest-ever manned balloon.
The Austrian skydiver appeared anxious but in control throughout the mission, but his family could barely watch, covering their faces with their hands.
The jump was postponed twice last week because of high winds. Baumgartner almost made an attempt last Tuesday, but the launch was canceled in the last minute when he was waiting in his capsule for the giant helium balloon to finish inflating, a gust of wind knocked down the balloon.
There was a live Internet stream of the event from nearly 30 cameras on the capsule, the ground and a helicopter.
After a weather delay of several hours Sunday morning, the balloon rose from its launch site at 9:30 a.m. MT (11:30 a.m. ET), with Baumgartner in the capsule hanging beneath it.
Shortly after launch, screens at mission control showed the capsule as it rose above 3,000 meters, high above the New Mexico desert as cheers erupted from people on the ground.
Baumgartner , dubbed “Fearless Felix,” planed to fall 115,000 feet (35,052 meters) in less than five minutes, then deploy a parachute for the final 5,000 feet (1524 meters) to earth.
On his ascent, Baumgartner appeared to suffer a heating problem in the visor of the ultra-advanced spacesuit he wore for the attempt. The suit provided oxygen, which is scarce at such high altitudes, and prevented Baumgartner freezing on the way down. The problem was later resolved, and the balloon rose to the designated height above Roswell, New Mexico.
The daredevil dive has risks. Baumgartner and his team have practices how he can avoid getting trapped in a dangerous ” horizontal spin.” His life will also depend on the integrity of his pressure suit, since temperatures could hit 70 degrees below zero Fahrenheit or lower, and the atmosphere will be so thin that his blood would vaporize if he were unprotected. If he loses consciousness during the five-minute plunge, he will survive only if his parachute deploys automatically. The effects on the body of breaking the sound barrier are also unknown.
As he opened the gate of the capsule, Baumgartner unbuckled himself slowly and stared into the curvature of the Earth.
Baumgartner dropped at ever-faster speeds through the low-friction stratosphere, before at one point losing control and beginning to spin. At this point, he says, he had to make a very hard decision.
“There was a period of time where I really thought that I am in trouble,” Baumgartner told a press conference after the landing. “Because I have a manual push button where I can release a drogue shute which pulls me out of the flat spin. But at the same time I knew if I pushed this button – this thing is all over, we are not going to fly supersonic.”
“When you fall down at that speed you have to make that decision, you know, somehow you have to make that call: Do I push that button and stay alive, or do I fight all my way down and break the speed of sound?” he added.
In a couple of seconds he regained command of his descent and opened the parachute only after breaking the record.
He appeared to be fine as he landed on the ground and fell to his knees, as his family clapped, and more than eight million people watched live.
Jumping from that height, Baumgartner one-upped an achievement that stood for 52 years, and broke two other records to boot.
He became the pilot of the highest-rising balloon in history.
His equipment showed that he accelerated to a speed of 1,342.8 kilometers per hour, shattering the sound barrier. Ejecting pilots have previously moved at this speed, but this is the first time man has exceeded Mach 1 on purpose.
The previous record was set in 1960 by US Air Force Colonel Joe Kittinger, who headed Mission Control and personally guided Felix through the jump this time. Kittinger jumped from 31,300 meters above ground while heading a program that developed safer parachutes for the US Air Force.
Kittinger has retained one of the records from that fall. Baumgartner’s freefall was 4 minutes 22 seconds, 17 seconds shorter than his predecessor’s.
Fearless Felix’s dive – which he prepared for over the past five years – was fraught with genuine danger. If he spun out of control, the Austrian was in danger of losing consciousness, while any malfunction in the suit at such a height would have resulted in a gruesome death due to the low air pressure.
Fearless Felix began skydiving as a teenager, and later performed for a Special Forces display team in the Austrian military.
He then made his name with a series of “guerrilla” parachute jumps from iconic buildings, bypassing security and sneaking in equipment hidden in a backpack.
He once held the record for both the shortest and longest parachute jump off a building in history – 29 meters from the Christ the Redeemer Statue in Rio De Janeiro, and 390 from the Taiwan 101. He also skydived across the English Channel.
Baumgartner says that it will be impossible for him to top the “space jump,” and plans to “retire” and become a helicopter rescue pilot.
The previous record for such a skydive was set by Joe Kittinger, who in 1960 jumped from 102,800 feet (31,333 meters) as part of a U.S. Air Force mission.
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