A senior vice president for Google cut himself loose from a balloon and parachuted 135,908 feet to earth on Friday, setting a new world record in skydiving.
Alan Eustace, 57, broke the previous record holder’s jump by more than 7,000 feet, the New York Times reports. It took roughly 2 hours for Eustace to make the ascent into the stratosphere and only 15 minutes to plummet back to earth. He made the jump wearing a spacesuit specially designed to withstand extreme altitudes and speeds topping 800 miles-per-hour. Witnesses on the ground reported hearing a sonic boom.
“It was beautiful,” Eustace said after the jump. “You could see the darkness of space and you could see the layers of atmosphere, which I had never seen before.”
[NYT]
More Must-Reads from TIME
- L.A. Fires Show Reality of 1.5°C of Warming
- Home Losses From L.A. Fires Hasten ‘An Uninsurable Future’
- The Women Refusing to Participate in Trump’s Economy
- Bad Bunny On Heartbreak and New Album
- How to Dress Warmly for Cold Weather
- We’re Lucky to Have Been Alive in the Age of David Lynch
- The Motivational Trick That Makes You Exercise Harder
- Column: No One Won The War in Gaza
Contact us at letters@time.com