On October 14, 2012, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner stepped off a capsule suspended 128,100 feet — approximately 24 miles — above the New Mexico desert and fell toward Earth, breaking the speed of sound in freefall and setting multiple world records in the process. The jump was broadcast live on YouTube, drawing an audience estimated at over eight million simultaneous viewers, at the time the largest live stream in the platform's history.

Baumgartner, working with Red Bull Stratos, a project that combined genuine scientific research with extraordinary spectacle, reached a peak velocity of 843.9 miles per hour — Mach 1.25 — during his freefall, becoming the first human to break the sound barrier without a vehicle. He was in freefall for approximately four minutes and twenty seconds before deploying his parachute, and landed safely in the New Mexico desert about nine minutes after jumping.

The scientific components of the mission included testing a pressurized suit designed to allow survival at the edge of space, collecting data relevant to escape systems for future high-altitude aircraft or spacecraft, and studying the physiological effects of supersonic freefall on the human body. The data was intended to contribute to the development of emergency exit protocols for astronauts and high-altitude pilots.

The jump required Baumgartner to ascend in a pressurized capsule lifted by a helium balloon over roughly two and a half hours. At that altitude, the sky above was black and the curvature of the Earth was visible. Temperatures outside the capsule were around -70 degrees Fahrenheit.

The moment of stepping off the capsule into that void, visible to millions watching a live stream, was one of those images that lodged itself into collective memory: a single human figure at the edge of space.