ROSWELL, N.M.
(AP) -- Extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner landed gracefully on Earth
after a 24-mile jump Sunday from the stratosphere in a daring, dramatic
feat that officials said made him the first skydiver to fall faster than
the speed of sound.
Baumgartner came down
safely in the eastern New Mexico desert about nine minutes after jumping
from his capsule 128,100 feet, or roughly 24 miles, above Earth. He
lifted his arms in victory, sending off loud cheers from jubilant
onlookers and friends inside the mission's control center in Roswell,
N.M.
"When I was standing there on top of the
world, you become so humble, you do not think about of breaking records
anymore, you do not think of about gaining scientific date. The only
thing you want is to come back alive," he said after the jump.
Brian
Utley, a jump observer from the International Federation of Sports
Aviation, said preliminary figures show Baumgartner reached a maximum
speed of 833.9 mph. That amounts to Mach 1.24, which is faster than the
speed of sound. No one has ever reached that speed wearing only a
high-tech suit.
Baumgartner says that
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
told reporters.
"Sometimes we have to get really high to see how small we are," he said.
The
altitude he leapt from also marked the highest-ever for a skydiver.
Organizers said the descent lasted just over nine minutes, about half of
it in free fall. Utley said he traveled 119, 846 feet in free fall.
Three
hours earlier, Baumgartner, known as "Fearless Felix," had taken off in
a pressurized capsule carried by a 55-story ultra-thin helium balloon.
After an at-times tense ascent, which included concerns about how well
his facial shield was working, the 43-year-old former military
parachutist completed a final safety check-list with mission control.
As
he exited his capsule from high above Earth, he flashed a thumbs-up
sign, well aware that the feat was being shown on a live-stream on the
Internet.
During the ensuing jump - from more
than three times the height of the average cruising altitude for
jetliners - Baumgartner was expected to hit a speed of 690 mph. He was
believed to have reached speeds that exceeded 700 mph.
Any
contact with the capsule on his exit could have torn his pressurized
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 attempted feat also marked the 65th anniversary of U.S.
test pilot Chuck Yeager successful attempt to become the first man to
officially break the sound barrier aboard an airplane.
At
Baumgartner's insistence, some 30 cameras recorded the event Sunday.
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 attempted to break the sound
barrier from 19.5 miles up in 1960, reaching speeds of 614 mph. With
Kittinger inside mission control Sunday, 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, and noted that it was getting "really
serious" now.
An hour into the flight,
Baumgartner had ascended more than 63,000 feet and had gone through a
trial run of the jump sequence that will send him plummeting toward
Earth. Ballast was dropped to speed up the ascent.
Kittinger told him, "Everything is in the green. Doing great."
As
Baumgartner ascended in the balloon, 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, 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
the tweets was one 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. It also was the end of his extreme altitude jumping career; he has
promised this will be 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.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
