After much anticipation and several scrapped attempts, Baumgartner landed safely in New Mexico slightly at about 2:20 p.m. ET Sunday.
There was doubt right up until the end that he’d be able to make the jump. Finally, at 1:44 p.m. ET, with the daredevil at more than 34,000 metres above the Earth, Red Bull Stratos made it official: Baumgartner would complete his jump.
Minutes later, he opened the door of his capsule at the edge of space and hopped into the history books.
The free fall from Earth’s stratosphere brought Baumgartner to speeds higher than 1,110 km/h.
Cheers broke out as Felix Baumgartner, 43, jumped from a tiny shelf outside the 3.3-by-2.4 metre fiberglass and acrylic capsule that was carried to 39 km by an enormous balloon.
“We love you Felix!” screamed the crowd as he plunged through the stratosphere.
“My visor is fogging up,” he gasped over the radio and he fell through the air moments before his parachute opened to the applause of the crowd on the ground, including his teary-eyed mother, father and girlfriend, watching on monitors miles below.
He landed about 10 minutes later, having broken the world record for the highest altitude jump by a skydiver, sponsors said.
As he prepared to jump from the pressurized capsule, Baumgartner went through a checklist of 40 items with project adviser Joe Kittinger, holder of a 31,333-metre high-altitude parachute jump record that Baumgartner hoped to smash.
He checked through an equipment list from his seat and expressed concern that his astronaut-like helmet was not heating properly.
“This is very serious, Joe,” said Baumgartner as the capsule, designed to remain at 12 degrees C ascended in skies where temperatures were expected to plunge below -67.8 C, according to the project’s website.
“Sometimes it’s getting foggy when I exhale. … I do not feel heat.”
Baumgartner’s ascent into the stratosphere took about 2 1/2 hours.
The 850,000-cubic-metre plastic balloon is about one-tenth the thickness of a Ziploc bag, or roughly as thin as a dry cleaner bag.
