Austrian adventurer Baumgartner to attempt first supersonic freefall

New York: Felix Baumgartner, the Austrian adventurer has thrilled onlookers with his skydiving and base-jumping endeavours but his latest plan is pushing him to the limits – of the earth.

British newspaper the Independent reports that his latest daredevil feat will be to attempt a skydive from the edge of space.

Several others have attempted to break that long-standing record, which has stood for decades as marks for other altitude extremes have tumbled. The most recent attempt was made in 2008, by a former French paratrooper, Michel Fournier, who spent years preparing only to have the balloon that was set to take him up break from its moorings and float away.

Baumgartner who has a former US Airforce colonel, Joe Kittinger, to guide him said: "He was my childhood hero."

Kittinger is not just any air force colonel. He leapt from a gondola attached to a high altitude balloon in 1960 to fall from a height of 19.5 miles.

Felix’s attempt to jump from the edge of space is planned for an as-yet unnamed location in North America. Dressed in a specially modified full pressure suit and helmet, he will ascend to the stratosphere in a pressurised capsule attached to a 450-foot high helium filled balloon.

He then intends to jump out at an altitude he hopes will exceed 120,000 feet, or nearly 23 miles, and make a descent lasting over five minutes. Scientists say he will almost certainly break the sound barrier during his free fall and become the first human to do so without the aid of a machine.

Baumgartner views his forthcoming attempt with a mixture of excitement and adrenalin-fuelled apprehension.

"No one really knows what that will be like," he says. "The fact is that 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."

Baumgartners' backers, the Austrian Red Bull energy drink firm, say that if all goes well, he should break the speed of sound some 35 seconds into his descent.