Baumgartner fell for 4 minutes and 19 seconds. At his peak he was moving at 1,357.6 km/h, or Mach 1.25, making him the first person to go supersonic outside a vehicle.
He reached the speed of sound 34 seconds after stepping off. His parachute opened at 9,000 feet, and he landed on his feet.
The mission behind the jump, Red Bull Stratos, had taken more than five years to set up, with the final capsule carried to the stratosphere by a helium balloon.
Eight million people watched the moment on a single YouTube stream, a concurrent-viewer record for the platform at the time, as Forbes reported. Seventy-seven TV channels carried the feed alongside.
Read also: Mansour backs City with £100m as appeal against 114-charge verdict looms over Etihad
“I know the whole world is watching, and I wish the whole world could see what I see,” Baumgartner said from the capsule door before the step-off, as Red Bull later recounted. “Sometimes you have to go really high up to understand how small you really are.”
A camping village on the Adriatic
Baumgartner died on July 17, 2025, in Porto Sant’Elpidio, a town on Italy’s Adriatic coast. He was 56.
He was flying a motorized paraglider when he reportedly fell ill in the air and lost control. He crashed into a wooden structure beside a swimming pool at the Le Mimose Family Camping Village and died of cardiac arrest, Global News reported.
“Our community is deeply affected by the tragic disappearance of Felix Baumgartner, a figure of global prominence, a symbol of courage and passion for extreme flight,” Mayor Massimiliano Ciarpella said, according to Al Jazeera.
Read also: Verstappen on whether he is still F1’s best: ‘I always think so. Otherwise, I’d quit
The jump Kittinger could not catch
Baumgartner’s freefall also broke Joe Kittinger’s 1960 altitude record of 102,800 feet, a mark that had stood for 52 years.
He was blunt about where that put him.
“Nobody remembers the second one,” he told Red Bull of the sound-barrier line.
The full mission footage is still hosted on Red Bull’s channel, and had crossed close to a billion views by the project’s 10th anniversary in 2022.
Read also: Bournemouth win eight straight games as £21m defender transforms Marco Rose’s side
Read also: Steven Gerrard puts Yamal ahead of teenage Messi and Ronaldo
