A 120,000 feet freefall jump live map powered by CartoDB
When we read about Felix Baumgartner plans to ascend to 120 000 feet and make a freefall jump rushing toward earth at supersonic speeds before parachuting to the ground in Rosswell New Mexico we were pretty excited.
The Baumgartner's freefall jump is part of the so-called Red Bull Stratos scientific challenge a mission to the edge of space. "Never before has anyone reached the speed of sound without being in an aircraft" says Dr. Jonathan Clark from the Red Bull Stratos team.
There's a live broadcast of the challenge here. It also features live data such as the location and the vertical speed.
The challenge was delayed for a few days and it finally moved forward on Sunday October 14 at 6am local time. As Baumgartner rushed towards Rosswell we run a test by fetching the live GPS coordinates coming in from the Red Bull Strato site and putting them into CartoDB visualizing it all on a real-time map.
This video captures the live experimental demo map powered by CartoDB along the video of the challenge as Felix Baumgartner opens his parachute and lands safely on his feet: