Felix Baumgartner’s supersonic freefall skydive from the edge of stratosphere soon

Austrian adventurer Felix Baumgartner has announced his plans to attempt the first supersonic freefall from the edge of space. He will set four records in this process.

Photo: Felix Baumgartner, adventurer

Baumgartner will jump from a record 120,000 feet, which will set an altitude record for the highest manned balloon flight. With the free fall, this 40-year old will also set the record for the longest free-fall and could become the first person to break the speed of sound with his own body. His free fall is supposed to last for more than five minutes.

He has not decided yet on from where he plans his jump though he plans to do it the 2010  spring or summer.

We will be kaaping an eye out for this intrepid adventurer and bringing you photos and videos of his record-breaking high altitude supersonic freefall, as soon as we can get hold of them – and we hope he pulls this off successfully.

Baumgartner has a mentor – Captain Joe Kittinger, the United States Air Force Captain, who was the first to make history by freefalling from 102,800 feet in 1960.

Kittinger’s jump had helped the US do some tests successfully for their first space programme. This jump would help in obtaining important telemetry data and scientists can also document the effect of travel at high speed and high altitude for further researches. Baumgartner is now receiving advices from Kittinger on operational safety and other aspects on the jump.

Felix Baumgartner will be wearing a specially modified full pressure suit and helmet for his journey. He will ascend to the stratosphere in a pressurized capsule attached to a 450-foot high helium filled balloon. Then he intends to jump out from an altitude that exceeds 120,000 feet or nearly 23 miles, and his descent will last a decent five minute.

According to scientists, Baumgartner will break the sound barrier during his free fall and thereby, become the first human to do so without the help of a machine.

Baumgartner is a sky diver and base-jumper (the highly dangerous business of throwing oneself off high buildings). Baumgartner is known as the god of the skies and nicknamed the ‘fearless felix’. Kittinger was Felix Baumgartner’s childhood hero. Baumgartner, once, sky dived over the English Channel starting thousands of feet above Dover and flew without any external propulsion.

He also jumped off the 1,242 feet tall Petronas twin towers in Kuala Lumpur, despite being caught by the Taipei security guards on three earlier attempts. Eventually, he was able to smuggle his parachute in and hide it inside the towers.

Felix Baumgartner, despite the excitement is quite apprehensive. “No one really knows what it will be like,” he said. “You have a lot of different air flows coming around your body. Some parts of you body are in supersonic flow and some parts are in transonic flow. What kind of reaction that creates, I can’t tell you.” Baumgartner is supported by the Austrian Red Bull energy drink firm.

His jump is an attempt to further space exploration. According to him, research on his jump could help to get astronauts back to earth if their space capsules malfunction.