Felix Baumgartner, the Austrian skydiver who made the historic 24-mile leap on Sunday from space to New Mexico, has released a video which documents his supersonic fall at 834mph.
The new video comes from a camera mounted on his chest which was pointed at his helmet and captures one particularly terrifying moment when the Austrian daredevil went into an uncontrolled spin. This is dangerous because it could cause blood to rush to his head, and he could have died. In fact, it almost brought the skydiver's bid to break the sound barrier to an abrupt end.
A clip of the brief crisis was shown on Austrian television, and can be seen below.
A stabilization chute would have automatically deployed if Baumgartner had exceeded 3.5Gs in an uncontrolled spin, but he also had manual control of the safeguard.
The former Austrian paratrooper described the tense moment in a press conference:
"There was a period of time where I really thought I'm in trouble," Baumgartner said. "Because I have a manual push button where I can release a drouge chute [a stabilization chute] which pulls me out of the flat spin, but at the same I time I knew If I push that button, this thing is all over, we're not going to fly supersonic."
Baumgartner is the first human to break the speed of sound without the propulsion or protection of a vehicle, according to National Geographic. Red Bull's live stream of his attempt attracted more than 8 million viewers, making it the most-watched YouTube event of all time.
