Joseph Kittinger leapt from the edge of space
On this day · 16 August 1960
From a balloon gondola nearly 20 miles up, an Air Force captain stepped into the void and fell faster than any human before him.
On August 16, 1960, U.S. Air Force Captain Joseph Kittinger stepped from an open balloon gondola at 102,800 feet — about 19 miles above the New Mexico desert — in the final jump of Project Excelsior. The sky above him was black, the air too thin to breathe, the edge of space in every sense that mattered.
He fell for roughly 4.5 minutes, reaching speeds near 614 mph in temperatures as low as -94°F, before his main parachute opened at 18,000 feet. A pressure glove had failed during the ascent, swelling his hand to twice its size, yet he jumped anyway.
For four and a half minutes there was almost nothing to feel — no rushing wind, no sense of speed, just a man and a very long way down.
The leap set three world records: the highest open-gondola balloon ascent, the longest free fall, and the longest parachute descent. Kittinger’s free-fall mark stood for 52 years, until Felix Baumgartner surpassed it in 2012.
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