Never-before-seen video footage from daredevil Felix Baumgartner's historic freefall from 24 miles above the Earth has been released by adventure camera maker GoPro ahead of a planned Superbowl ad campaign.
The video, which was reportedly filmed by seven GoPro HERO2 cameras mounted on the balloon spacecraft Baumgartner rode to elevation and on the skydiver himself, highlights the one-of-a-kind view of a 4-minute freefall from the stratosphere.
The jump, which took place Oct. 14, 2012, was streamed live on YouTube, where 8 million people tuned in to watch the event, many perhaps keeping an eye out for the worst. Traveling at such high speeds creates the possibility for anything to go wrong, but fortunately Baumgartner touched down safely in the New Mexico desert, netting world records for his deed.
During the 10-minute stunt, Baumgartner reached a peak velocity of Mach 1.25 and speeds as fast as 840 mph.
At one point in the video, Baumgartner enters a violent spin cycle and says he thinks he might pass out, but he eventually rights himself and makes a safe landing.
While some have billed it as a skydive from outer space - and in the video you can see the blackness of space contrasting against the blue curvature of Earth - the jump was technically made from Earth's stratosphere, and some experts dismissed the event as nothing more than a publicity stunt by Red Bull and GoPro, as there was not much, scientifically, that could be gained by such an endeavor.
Space, as we know it, starts at an altitude of 100 kilometers above ground. When Baumgartner made the jump, he was not even half that high, said Slate's astronomy writer Phil Plait when the first video of the jump was released in October of last year.
The video below is the newly released footage, which within just one day of its posting has attracted more than 1.5 million views on YouTube.