Standing at the edge of space

In 1947, Air Force Capt. Chuck Yeager became the first person to fly an aircraft faster than the speed of sound. Sometime later this year, Austria's Felix Baumgartner wants to become the first human to achieve these speeds without the luxury of doing so in aircraft: He plans to do it in an open freefall. 

Riding a capsule carried by a balloon to the edges of space, more than 23 miles up, Baumgartner plans to step out of the capsule at about 120,000 feet, then hurtle toward the Earth at more than 768 miles per hour -- faster than the speed of sound. 

In this photo, Baumgartner stands at the edge of the capsule ready to jump from an altitude of 71,581 feet during preparations for the Red Bull Stratos project above New Mexico. He's made more than 2,000 jumps in his lifetime, but this jump, on March 15, 2012, was his highest jump yet. At 71,581 he is above the mark known as the "Armstrong Line," the point of altitude at which the atmospheric pressure is so low (0.0618 atmosphere) that bodily fluids would, essentially, boil at human body temperature, requiring a protective, pressurized spacesuit. LINK