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Teddy bear falls from space, beats skydiving record

NEW YORK - A teddy bear has beaten Felix Baumgartner’s skydiving world record after plummeting to earth from more than 39,000 metres.

NEW YORK - A teddy bear has beaten Felix Baumgartner’s skydiving world record after plummeting to earth from more than 39,000 metres.

Meet Felix Beargartner: Babbage the cuddly toy has become a rival to human daredevil Felix Baumgartner by jumping from a weather balloon in the upper reaches of the atmosphere.

Babbage was fitted with a computer which shot photos of the flight and transmitted his position.

He travelled at speeds of up to 200 miles per hour although was lucky not to be injured when his parachute yanked his neck back as it deployed.

Software programmer David Ackerman decided to fly Babbage after watching a video of Baumgartner’s leap from space.

Mr Baumgartner’s Red Bull Stratos project set the world record when he skydived from a height of 38,969 metres last October. The event was viewed live on YouTube by more than 8 million people.

For his “Ted Bull Stratos” project, Mr Ackerman said that using a teddy bear was an obvious choice because of the “cuteness factor” involved.

Mr Ackerman had to remove Babbage’s fluffy insides to install the Raspberry Pi computer and GPS software, the Daily Telegraph reported.

The low-cost Raspberry Pi was created to introduce computing skills to children but Mr Ackerman chose it for the ease in which it could be used to take photos.

After a failed attempt earlier this month Babbage was launched from a site near Newbury, Berkshire.

Babbage, like Mr Baumgartner, was strapped into a launch capsule with an over-the-shoulder camera.

The computer inside him broadcast his location and shot photographs of his ascent from a camera fitted in Babbage’s eye, before switching to video to record his descent.

Babbage sat on a cradle which Mr Ackerman built and a firing mechanism on the weather balloon was triggered when Babbage reached an altitude of above 39 kilometres.

The bear, who measures just 20 centimetres in height, landed just under four hours later in a field near Shaftesbury.

The computer inside him broadcast his location and shot photographs of his ascent from a camera fitted in Babbage’s eye, before switching to video to record his descent. AGENCIES

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