Social media was buzzing with news of a skydiver jumping 24 miles from earth.

Felix Baumgartner, an extreme high altitude jumper, set a new record. The former military parachutist took a capsule 24 miles above earth and jumped, traveling so fast he broke the sound barrier.

The high-flying plan

Baumgartner spent five years planning this jump. He had set previous high-altitude jumps, and taken several practice jumps before hopping into his pressurized capsule carried by a 55-story ultra-thin helium balloon. He deployed a parachute, as he got closer to the ground and landed safely in Roswell, New Mexico. The drop took nine minutes.

Known as “Fearless Felix,” the 43 year-old plummeted to the earth at 833 mph. When asked how it felt to take the leap, Baumgartner said, “When I was standing there on top of the world, you become so humble, you do not think about of breaking records anymore, you do not think of about gaining scientific data. The only thing you want is to come back alive.”

When he landed he commented on how emotional the trip was. “It’s hard to realize what happened because there’s still so many emotions,” he said. “I had tears in my eyes when I was coming back a couple of times because you’re sitting there and you thought about that moment so many times, you know, how it would feel and how it would look like.”
Caught on camera, talked about on social media

Baumgartner’s jump was streamed live online, with 30 camera capturing the event. Nearly 7.3 million people watched the Austrian daredevil dive to earth. After he landed, Red Bull posted a picture of Baumgartner on his knees on the ground to Facebook, generating nearly 216,000 likes, 10,000 comments and more than 29,000 shares in less than 40 minutes, according to Fox News.

Skydiver plans to retire

Baumgartner says this was his final jump. He plans to retire, living a “calmer” life as a helicopter pilot running rescue missions in the United State and in Austria.