It was not immediately clear if the 43-year-old succeeded in breaking the sound barrier with the fastest freefall ever as he plummeted from an altitude of more than 24 miles (39 kilometers) and fell for over five minutes.
Television pictures showed him opening his parachute at about 5,000 feet and guiding himself back toward ground. Baumgartner had taken more than two hours to get up to the jump altitude.
He had already broken one record, before he even leapt: the previous highest altitude for a manned balloon flight was 113,740 feet, set in 1961.
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