Red Bull is sponsoring a parachute jump from a high-altitude balloon at the edge of space – 120,000 feet. The project is called Stratos.

In the early days of the Space Age, the US Air Force conducted high-altitude manned balloon experiments in Project Man High and Project Excelsior. In Project Excelsior, Colonel Joe Kittinger set a world’s record for the highest parachute jump, which the Stratos project seeks to break.

Even though this is not a rocket flight, it is helping to pave the way for citizen space exploration by testing spacesuit and life-support systems. When Felix Baumgartner walks out of the Stratos balloon gondola at 120,000 feet, it will be “one small step for a citizen explorer, one giant leap for citizen science.”