Here’s the video of Google’s VP Alan Eustace skydiving from space

Google vice president Robert Alan Eustace has broken the record for the highest parachute jump in history, smashing through the sound barrier in the process. Eustace jumped from 130 000 ft (nearly 40kms up) over the southern New Mexico desert. That’s just a little higher than Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner during the Red Bull Stratos expedition back in 2012.

Eustace took two hours to reach drop height but his descent from space to earth lasted a mere four and a half minutes and stretched 42 km. At peak speed, the middle-aged exec was falling at speeds in excess of 1 322.00 km/h.

Even though their vertical speed and free fall distance records remain in different categories because Eustace’s jump involved a drogue parachute while Baumgartner’s did not, going past Baumgartner’s mark — at a fraction of the cost — remains a pretty impressive feat.

Eustace began training for the jump in 2011. He met with Taber MacCallum, one of the founding members of earth science research facility Biosphere 2, and began preparations for the project. MacCallum’s company, Paragon Space Development Corporation, created a life-support system to allow Eustace to breathe pure oxygen in a pressure suit during his ascent and fall.

Eustace was lifted by a balloon containing 35 0000 cubic feet of helium.

Commenting afterwards he said, “It was amazing. You could see the darkness of space and you could see the layers of atmosphere, which I had never seen before.”