The speed, revealed at a press conference after the unprecedented leap from 39km up, was significantly higher than that given earlier by a spokeswoman, who had put his maximum speed as 1136km/h.
No one has ever reached that speed wearing only a high-tech suit.
The 43-year-old floated down to Earth on a red and white parachute canopy.
“When I was standing there on top of the world, you become so humble, you do not think about breaking records anymore, you do not think about gaining scientific data. The only thing you want is to come back alive,” he said after the jump.
Baumgartner says that traveling faster than sound is “hard to describe because you don’t feel it.”
With no reference points, “you don’t know how fast you travel,” he told reporters.
“Sometimes we have to get really high to see how small we are,” he said.
Mission control erupted in cheers as Baumgartner made a near-perfect jump from a capsule hoisted aloft by a giant helium-filled balloon to an altitude of around 128,000 feet (39km).
“Sometimes you have (go) up really high to (realise) how small you are,” Baumgartner said shortly before he jumped, watched in live footage beamed around the world.
“I think 20 tons have fallen from my shoulders. I prepared for this for seven years,” he told German-language ServusTV in Austria in his first interview after the leap.
Source: heraldsun.com.au
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