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| The capsule, bottom left, and attached helium balloon carrying Felix Baumgartner lifts off as he attempts to break the speed of sound with his own body by jumping from a space capsule lifted by a helium balloon, Sunday, Oct. 14, 2012, in Roswell, N.M. Baumgartner plans to jump from an altitude of 120,000 feet, an altitude chosen to enable him to achieve Mach 1 in free fall, which would deliver scientific data to the aerospace community about human survival from high altitudes. |
ROSWELL, N.M.
(AP) -- In a giant leap from more than 24 miles up, a daredevil
skydiver shattered the sound barrier Sunday while making the highest
jump ever - a tumbling, death-defying plunge from a balloon to a safe
landing in the New Mexico desert.
Felix
Baumgartner hit Mach 1.24, or 833.9 mph, according to preliminary data,
and became the first man to reach supersonic speed without traveling in a
jet or a spacecraft after hopping out of a capsule that had reached an
altitude of 128,100 feet above the Earth.
Landing
on his feet in the desert, the man known as "Fearless Felix" lifted his
arms in victory to the cheers of jubilant onlookers and friends.
"When
I was standing there on top of the world, you become so humble, you do
not think about breaking records anymore, you do not think about gaining
scientific data," he said after the jump. "The only thing you want is
to come back alive."
A worldwide audience
watched live on the Internet via cameras mounted on his capsule as
Baumgartner, wearing a pressurized suit, stood in the doorway of his
capsule, gave a thumbs-up and leapt into the stratosphere.
"Sometimes
we have to get really high to see how small we are," an exuberant
Baumgartner told reporters outside mission control after the jump.
Baumgartner's
descent lasted for just over nine minutes, about half of it in a free
fall of 119,846 feet, according to Brian Utley, a jump observer from the
International Federation of Sports Aviation. He said the speed
calculations were preliminary figures.
Baumgartner said traveling faster than sound is "hard to describe because you don't feel it."
With no reference points, "you don't know how fast you travel," he said.
The
43-year-old former Austrian paratrooper with more than 2,500 jumps
behind him had taken off early Sunday in a capsule carried by a 55-story
ultra-thin helium balloon.
His ascent that was tense at times and included concerns about how well his facial shield was working.
Any
contact with the capsule on his exit could have torn his suit, a rip
that could expose him to a lack of oxygen and temperatures as low as
minus-70 degrees. That could have caused lethal bubbles to form in his
bodily fluids.
But none of that happened. He
activated his parachute as he neared Earth, gently gliding into the
desert east of Roswell and landing without any apparent difficulty. The
images triggered another loud cheer from onlookers at mission control,
among them his mother, Eva Baumgartner, who was overcome with emotion,
crying.
He then was taken by helicopter to meet fellow members of his team, whom he hugged in celebration.
Coincidentally,
Baumgartner's feat 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.
At Baumgartner's
insistence, some 30 cameras recorded his stunt Shortly after launch,
screens at mission control showed the capsule as it began rising high
above the New Mexico desert, with cheers erupting from organizers.
Baumgartner could be seen on video, calmly checking instruments inside
the capsule.
Baumgartner's team included Joe
Kittinger, who first tried to break the sound barrier from 19.5 miles up
in 1960, reaching speeds of 614 mph. 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 around the 100,000-foot mark.
An
hour into the flight, Baumgartner had ascended more than 63,000 feet
and had gone through a trial run of the jump sequence. Ballast was
dropped to speed up the ascent.
Kittinger told him, "Everything is in the green. Doing great."
As
Baumgartner ascended, so did the number of viewers watching on YouTube.
Nearly 7.3 million watched as he sat on the edge of the capsule moments
before jumping.
After he landed, his sponsor,
Red Bull, posted a picture of Baumgartner on his knees on the ground to
Facebook, generating nearly 216,000 likes, 10,000 comments and more
than 29,000 shares in less than 40 minutes.
On
Twitter, half the worldwide trending topics had something to do with
the jump, pushing past seven NFL football games. Among them was this
tweet from NASA: "Congratulations to Felix Baumgartner and RedBull
Stratos on record-breaking leap from the edge of space!"
This
attempt marked the end of a five-year road for Baumgartner, a
record-setting high-altitude jumper. He already made two preparation
jumps in the area, one from 15 miles high and another from 18 miles
high. He has said that this was his final jump.
Baumgartner
has said he plans to settle down with his girlfriend and fly
helicopters on mountain rescue and firefighting missions in the U.S. and
Austria.
