page_title: Parachute
section_title: Records
hierarchical_section_title: Parachute / Records
caption_attribution_description: English: VENEZUELA
context_page_description: A parachute is a device used to slow the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag. Parachutes are usually made out of light, strong fabric, originally silk, now most commonly nylon. They are typically dome-shaped, but vary, with rectangles, inverted domes, and others found. A variety of loads are attached to parachutes, including people, food, equipment, space capsules, and bombs.
  A drogue chute is used to aid horizontal deceleration of a vehicle including fixed-wing aircraft and drag racers, provide stability, as to assist certain types of light aircraft in distress, tandem free-fall; and as a pilot triggering deployment of a larger parachute.
context_section_description: On August 16, 1960, Joseph Kittinger, in the Excelsior III test jump, set the previous world record for the highest parachute jump. He jumped from a balloon at an altitude of 102,800 feet (31,333 m) (which was also a manned balloon altitude record at the time). A small stabilizer chute deployed successfully, and Kittinger fell for 4 minutes and 36 seconds, also setting a still-standing world record for the longest parachute free-fall, if falling with a stabilizer chute is counted as free-fall. At an altitude of 17,500 feet (5,300 m), Kittinger opened his main chute and landed safely in the New Mexico desert. The whole descent took 13 minutes and 45 seconds. During the descent, Kittinger experienced temperatures as low as −94 °F (−70 °C). In the free-fall stage, he reached a top speed of 614 mph (988 km/h or 274 m/s), or Mach 0.8.
  According to Guinness World Records, Yevgeni Andreyev, a colonel in the Soviet Air Force, held the official FAI record for the longest free-fall parachute jump (without drogue chute) after falling for 24,500 m (80,380 ft) from an altitude of 25,457 m (83,523 ft) near the city of Saratov, Russia on November 1, 1962, until broken by Felix Baumgartner in 2012.
  Felix Baumgartner broke Joseph Kittinger's record on October 14, 2012, with a jump from an altitude of 127,852 feet (38,969.3 m) and reaching speeds up to 833.9 mph (1,342.0 km/h or 372.8 m/s), or nearly Mach 1.1.  Kittinger was an advisor for Baumgartner's jump.
  Alan Eustace made a jump from the stratosphere on October 24, 2014, from an altitude of 135,889.108 feet (41,419 m). However, because Eustace's jump involved a drogue parachute while Baumgartner's did not, their vertical speed and free fall distance records remain in different record categories.
caption: A jumper in free-fall in Venezuela with his parachute on his back
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