A Google executive set a new world record for the farthest skydive as he jumped from a balloon near the top of the stratosphere!
Alan Eustace, 57, is a senior vice-president at Google, and at dawn he was lifted by a balloon filled with 35,000 cubic feet of helium from an abandoned runway at the airport in Roswell, New Mexico.
For a little over two hours, the balloon ascended at speeds up to 1,600 feet per minute to an altitude of more than 25 miles. Eustace dangled underneath in a specially designed spacesuit with an elaborate life-support system. He returned to earth just 15 minutes after starting his fall.
“It was amazing,” he said. “It was beautiful. You could see the darkness of space and you could see the layers of atmosphere, which I had never seen before.”
Eustace cut himself loose from the balloon with the aid of a small explosive device and plummeted toward the Earth at speeds that peaked at 822 mph, setting off a small sonic boom heard by observers on the ground.
Eustace’s top altitude was initially reported as 135,908 feet. The final number being submitted to the World Air Sports Federation is 135,890 feet. The previous altitude record was set by Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner, who jumped from 128,100 feet on Oct. 14, 2012.
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