Last night, at about 20h00 local time, an Austrian by the name of Felix Baumgartner rose 128 000 feet into the air and jumped, free-falling back to earth from the stratosphere. Part of the Red Bull Stratos project, this is the highest skydive ever attempted. And Felix even landed on his feet. We’ve got all the video, after the jump.

After an aborted mission earlier in the week, a weather window finally presented itself last night for Felix’s ascent to 128 000 feet, the edge of space. Filling a 500-foot balloon with helium, Felix was sat in a small capsule below the balloon, poised for flight. A number of records stood to be broken. First, for the highest manned balloon flight, and secondly for the longest freefall. He also wanted to break the sound barrier.

Wearing a specialised pressure suit to prevent his blood from boiling in the low pressure altitude, Felix broke the sound barrier about 40 seconds into the jump, falling to earth for over three minutes before deploying his chute to land on his feet. He achieved a total freefall time of four minutes and 19 seconds, just shy of the existing record.

Standing on the edge of the capsule just before his jump, he said:

Sometimes you have to get up really high, to see how small you are. I’m coming home now.

Things didn’t go completely smoothly though – it was touch and go fro a while as he started spinning out of control and his audio feed cut out. He managed to recover though and deploy without any hiccups. You can see the full length video here.

Even more amazing, have a look at the footage from his helmet, especially at his lateral spin that sent him out of control:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGlF4Wtf1WM

Of course, no event of this magnitude would be complete without its own meme. Felix’s meme made it’s way to Pinterest, known as “The Other Felix”:

This entire project has been amazing, even more so the fact that the jump was streamed live. I wonder what is next for Felix?

[Source: Red Bull Stratos, Daily Mail, YouTube]