There's a certain irony to the mission's sensitivity to wind gusts. The massive but thin-skinned polyethylene balloon that was to carry him aloft was partially filled, and he was already ensconced in the capsule slung below it, when gusty winds forced the cancellation of that day's ascent. The total duration of the descent was 9 minutes, 3 seconds.īaumgartner nearly got off the ground on Tuesday. It was really a lot harder than I thought it was going to be." We'll have to wait and see if we really broke the sound barrier. I didn't feel a sonic boom because I was so busy just trying to stabilize myself. I thought for a few seconds that I'd lose consciousness. I thought I'd just spin a few times and that would be that, but then I started to speed up. "The exit was perfect but then I started spinning slowly. ![]() "First we got off with a beautiful launch and then we had a bit of drama with a power supply issue to my visor," Baumgartner said in a statement. Those figures are all preliminary and will be vetted by the appropriate governing bodies. The duration of the freefall, 4 minutes and 19 seconds, was just shy of the record (4:36). Felix Baumgartner in freefall on Sunday, October 14, as seen via infrared tracking camera.īaumgartner seems clearly to have set a record for the highest manned balloon flight and the highest freefall, having jumped from at altitude of 128,097 feet. But that would handily beat the record for the fastest freefall, which had stood at 614 mph for a half-century. The team's expectation was that 690 mph would be sufficient to get Baumgartner to Mach 1 - a somewhat variable standard, depending on elevation, air density, and other factors. Later, they raised that to 1,342.8 km/h, or 834.4 mph. On Sunday, the 43-year-old extreme skydiver ascended to the upper reaches of the atmosphere above Roswell, N.M., in a bid to come racing back down in a supersonic freefall.Īt first, Baumgartner's Red Bull Stratos team said that the unofficial top speed of the freefall was 1,137 kilometers per hour, or 706 miles per hour. One false start was enough for Felix Baumgartner. You can follow Managing Editor Tariq Malik on Twitter on Twitter. "Felix is a truly brave explorer, and his jump will benefit space exploration," Whitesides wrote. Baumgartner's feat, Whitesides added, stands apart. George Whitesides, Virgin Galactic's president (gtwhitesides), conceded that his company's SpaceShipTwo passenger spaceships will fly higher than Baumgartner when they make begin their commercial suborbital space launches, but passengers will always return home inside the spacecraft. The private space tourism company Virgin Galactic lauded the flight on its official Twitter account. We're working on supersonic flight for the rest of us - with a plane!" added officials at NASA's Langley Research Center in Langley, Va., which is researching future supersonic flight concepts.Įven private spaceflight companies sent congratulations to Baumgartner. "Congrats Felix Baumgartner and #spacejump team. "Congratulations … from all of us at ESA!" the European Space Agency wrote via Twitter. ![]() ESA and NASA also weighed in on the jump. Praise for Baumgartner's leap did not only come from individual astronauts. "And a better champion could not have been found than Felix Baumgartner." "Records are made to be broken," Kittinger said in a post-jump news conference. "Look at that! Who says technology doesn't possess beauty?" Cristoforetti wrote. She marveled at the live views of Earth from more than 24 miles. Some noted that the skydiver was the fourth-highest person near Earth, beat only by the three astronauts living on the International Space Station, which orbits more than 240 miles (386 km) above the planet.ĮSA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, an Italian Air Force officer who writes on Twitter as Astro_Samantha, repeatedly posted links to the live Red Bull Stratos webcast to ask the public (and her fellow astronauts) if they were watching. Several NASA and ESA astronauts appeared to be following Baumgartner's skydive attempt live. "This is just like a spacewalk, but on a vertical orbit." "My dream of coming back from space by foot is about to be realized," Clervoy wrote as astro_JFrancois. Red Bull Stratos officials said that in addition to breaking several standing records, the project was aimed at understanding how the human body responds to the extreme environment near the edge of space.ĮSA astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy of France said the jump could help future astronaut escape systems, adding that the jump was something that he'd also thought about in the past.
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