Photo: Sven Hoffman, Red Bull
Felix Baumgartner during a testing session of his
suit.An Austrian skydiving expert will take a flight in a stratospheric balloon more than 120,000 feet up and attempt to become the first person to break the sound barrier (approximately 690 mph) in a freefall.

On January 22, Felix Baumgartner and several members of the Red Bull Stratos team publicly unveiled for the first time the details of their "Mission to the Edge of Space," for which Baumgartner is the Test Jump Pilot.

Joe Kittinger in 1960, has offered assistance to Red
Bull's "Mission to the Edge of Space"According to the company, "This is very much a step into the unknown; no freefall -- let alone a supersonic one -- has been successfully completed from the target altitude."

"The main challenges," says Art Thompson, the team's Technical Project Director, "concern pressure, thermal -- hot and cold temperatures, and acceleration and deceleration through three layers of space."

Baumgartner is an accomplished BASE jumper and he's set records before which include a flight across the English Channel with a carbon wing. But he's never done anything like this. When asked if he was nervous, he answered in the affirmative. "Yes, there's fear," says Baumgarter. "But I use fear to my advantage, to keep focused."