The Red Bull energy-drink company announced today that Baumgartner's Stratos mission was back in action, aiming to set a record for the longest, fastest, highest parachute jump.

Word of the renewed effort leaked out over the weekend in The Telegraph. That report claimed that the balloon would lift off from Roswell, N.M., in August — but a spokeswoman for the project, Trish Medalen, told me that it's too early to announce a date. The most she'd say is that the team plans to make an attempt sometime in the next year.

Back in business
An out-of-court settlement was reached in the dispute last July. Neither party has discussed the terms of the settlement, but it opened the way for pre-jump preparations to resume. In December, KRQE-TV reported that the launch crew was conducting stratospheric balloon tests at the Roswell Industrial Air Center.

Red Bull Stratos

Click on the image for a 12-megabyte PDF graphic that shows every phase of skydiver Felix Baumgartner's Red Bull Stratos mission.

(This pdf may not be available)

The flight plan calls for Baumgartner, a veteran 42-year-old skydiver from Austria, to rise to an altitude of 120,000 feet (36,576 meters) on a helium balloon equipped with a pressurized capsule. The ascent should take about three hours. Baumgartner will be wearing a pressure suit and astronaut-style helmet, and an oxygen-tank system will be built into his parachute pack. All this equipment is meant to keep him safe amid temperatures of 94 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-70 degrees Celsius).

Baumgartner would jump out of the capsule and go into free-fall for about five minutes, reaching speeds in excess of Mach 1 (which is about 690 mph or 1,110 kilometers per hour at that altitude). At a height of 5,000 feet (1.5 kilometers), Baumgartner would open his parachute, slowing down his descent for the final 10 minutes or so.

The team said it recently went through a successful mission simulation inside a vacuum chamber at Brooks City-Base in Texas. That three-hour rehearsal duplicated the temperatures and near-vacuum conditions Baumgartner would face during the ascent.

"The test in the chamber was a decisive moment for us," technical director Art Thompson said in a news release. "It's as close as you can get to the near space conditions without leaving Earth. We were able to verify our equipment, and now we're moving on to plan the first manned test flights."

Break my record ... please
One of his advisers is the current parachute-jump record holder, retired Air Force Col. Joe Kittinger. During the Air Force's "Excelsior III" stratospheric test project in 1960, Kittinger took a free-fall from an altitude of 102,800 feet (31,333). He approached the speed of sound but never quite surpassed it, and ended up setting a record for highest, fastest and longest free-fall that has stood for more than a half-century.

Kittinger said he has gotten plenty of phone calls over the years from folks who were thinking about breaking his record. "Most of 'em had no idea of the challenge," the 83-year-old said in a video. "I stayed away from it, constantly, until ... I was really very seriously interested when I was approached by Red Bull Stratos."

Kittinger has already experienced one of the potential killers associated with a high-altitude jump: going into a perilous spin during the descent. That happened during his Excelsior I jump in 1959 when a parachute wrapped around his neck, causing him to spiral uncontrollably and black out. Kittinger didn't regain consciousness until a second parachute was triggered to open automatically at 10,000 feet.

"Never before has anyone gone supersonic without being in an aircraft," Clark said. "Red Bull Stratos is testing new equipment and developing the procedures for inhabiting such high altitudes as well as enduring such extreme acceleration. The aim is to improve the safety for space professionals as well as potential space tourists."

Will Baumgartner's mission represent one giant leap for future space travelers, or is it really nothing more than a publicity stunt? What do you think? Feel free to register your vote in our Live Poll and leave your comments below