Felix Baumgartner is an Austrian skydiver and a BASE jumper. Today he set the world record for skydiving 127,000 feet from the edge of space. Baumgartner spent time in the Austrian military where he practiced parachute jumping, including training to land on small target zones.
Red Bull Stratos is the name of Baumgartner’s most famous project in which he jumped to Earth from a helium balloon in the stratosphere; reaching the altitude record for a manned balloon flight.
Here’s the gif of his landing
Here’s a really cool pic of him standing at the edge of space
The launch was scheduled for 9 October 2012, but was aborted due to adverse weather conditions, and so the capsule launched instead on 14 October. Baumgartner landed in eastern New Mexico after jumping from a world record 127,000 feet, or almost 24 miles, and travelled at speeds up to 725mph. He was in freefall for 4 minutes, 19 seconds.
He broke the sound barrier. Here’s the video of his press conference
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