One Year Later, New POV Video of Baumgartner's Freefall

By Nancy Atkinson - October 16, 2013 at 2:52 PM UTC | Space Exploration
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A year ago, BASE jumper Felix Baumgartner dove out of a balloon-borne capsule in the stratosphere (not space), 39 kilometers (24 miles) up. It was what I called "part science experiment, part publicity stunt, part life-long ambition," with Baumgartner attempting to break the speed of sound with his body in a record-setting freefall. He accomplished just that, although many have questioned the usefulness of this "stunt" (

read Amy Shira Teitel's great piece from last year

.)

But, in some sense, you gotta admire Baumgartner's courage.

Red Bull has now released a new full 9.5-minute video of the entire dive, showing several views, including what Baumgartner saw during the dive, along with real-time readouts of his altitude, airspeed, G-force load, heart rate and other data. It's interesting to watch how he got himself out of the incredible spin he was in, and fun to see how he opened up his visor before hitting the ground.

Here's what Baumgartner said about the spin in the post-jump press conference last year:

"It started out really good because my exit was perfect, I did exactly what I was supposed to do… It looked like for a second I was going to tumble two more times and then get it under control, but for some reason that spin became so violent over all axis and it was hard to know how to get out of it, because, if you are trapped in a pressurized suit – normally as a skydiver you can feel the air and get direct feedback from the air — but here you are trapped in a suit that is pressurized at 3.5 PSI so you don't know how to feel the air. It is like swimming without touching the water. And it's hard because every when time it turns you around you have to figure out what to do. So I was sticking my arm out and it became worse and then I stuck arm out the other side and it became less, so I was fighting all the way down to regain control because I wanted to break the speed of sound. And I hit it. I don't know how many seconds, but I could feel air was building up and then I hit it."

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com