An American amateur parachute jumper who reached 123,500 feet with his strato jump, had his record beaten by an Austrian skydiver who is best known for jumping to Earth from a helium balloon on what date?
Nick Piantanida Nicholas John "Nick" Piantanida (August 15, 1932 – August 29, 1966) was an American amateur parachute jumper who reached 123,500 feet (37,642 meters, 23.39 miles) with his "Strato Jump II" balloon on February 2, 1966, flying a manned balloon higher than anyone before, a record that stood until Felix Baumgartner's flight on October 14, 2012.
Mercury-Atlas 8 Mercury-Atlas 8 (MA-8) was the fifth United States manned space mission, part of NASA's Mercury program. Astronaut Walter M. Schirra Jr., orbited the Earth six times in the Sigma 7 spacecraft on October 3, 1962, in a nine-hour flight focused mainly on technical evaluation rather than on scientific experimentation. This was the longest U.S. manned orbital flight yet achieved in the Space Race, though well behind the several-day record set by the Soviet Vostok 3 earlier in the year. It confirmed the Mercury spacecraft's durability ahead of the one-day Mercury-Atlas 9 mission that followed in 1963.