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AP PHOTOS: Skydiver’s supersonic, 24-mile jump

Felix Baumgartner, third from left, of Austria, gets a hug from Mission Control technical project director Art Thompson, as television crews and pool photographers converge on the scene, after Baumgartner successfully jumped from a space capsule lifted by a helium balloon at a height of just over 128,000 feet above the Earth
Felix Baumgartner, third from left, of Austria, gets a hug from Mission Control technical project director Art Thompson, as television crews and pool photographers converge on the scene, after Baumgartner successfully jumped from a space capsule lifted by a helium balloon at a height of just over 128,000 feet above the Earth's surface, Sunday, Oct. 14, 2012, in Roswell, N.M. (Ross Franklin / Associated Press)
The Associated Press Associated Press

Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner became the first skydiver to break the speed of sound in a 24-mile-high jump from a balloon on Sunday, reaching 833.9 mph in a free fall that lasted some 9 minutes.

Landing on his feet in the New Mexico desert, the man known as “Fearless Felix” lifted his arms in victory to the cheers of onlookers and friends.

“When I was standing there on top of the world, you become so humble, you do not think about breaking records anymore, you do not think about gaining scientific data,” he said after the jump. “The only thing you want is to come back alive.”

“Sometimes we have to get really high to see how small we are,” an exuberant Baumgartner told reporters outside mission control after safely returning to Earth.

Here’s a gallery of photos from Baumgartner’s leap into the record books.