Google vice-president Alan Eustace has jumped from an altitude of 41,150 metres to break the world record set two years ago by Austria's Felix Baumgartner.
On Friday, the 57-year-old went up in a helium balloon over the New Mexico desert and did a free-fall skydive at a maximum speed of 1322 km/h while breaking the sound barrier and at the same time beating Baumgartner's speed record.
The Google executive wore a pressurised suit like astronauts wear, especially designed to withstand extreme altitudes and speeds such as those he braved during the free fall before opening his parachute.
Eustace, who took two hours in the balloon to reach the 41,150 metres, made the descent in just 15 minutes.
The dive, which unlike Baumgartner's in 2012 was done very discreetly and attracted hardly any media attention, was part of a project of the Paragon Space Development corporation dedicated to exploring the stratosphere.
Though Eustace is one of Google's vice presidents, he made the dive as a personal undertaking and the technology giant was not involved.
On September 14, 2012, the Austrian high-risk athlete Felix Baumgartner became the first human to break the sound barrier in a free fall, diving from an altitude of 39,068 metres.
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