Felix Baumgartner Dies At Age 56, Made History With Skydive From Space

Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian base jumper and skydiver who made history with his skydive from space, died while paragliding in Italy on Thursday. Baumgartner was 56.

According to CNN affiliate SkyTG24 (h/t CNN's Mitchell McCluskey and Sharon Braithwaite), the incident occurred in the coastal town of Porto Sant’Elpidio. Baumgartner lost control of his paraglider before crashing into a hotel swimming pool. Local authorities are still working to determine has exact cause of death, per CNN.

Part of Baumgartner's paraglider struck a woman, but she was not seriously injured.

Baumgartner made a career out of extreme sports, breaking records after jumping from places no one else had before. In 1999, he set the world record for the highest parachute jump from a building when he base jumped from the 1,483-foot Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

He also holds the record for the lowest base jump ever, a feat he achieved after jumping from the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro.

The stunt that put Baumgartner on the map came in 2012 when he broke a world record by skydiving from a pressurized pod nearly 24 miles above the ground. It was the highest skydive on record.

The stunt, which took six years to plan, required Baumgartner to wear a pressurized suit capable of handling temperatures up to minus 97.6 degrees Fahrenheit. He was carried into the stratosphere with a helium balloon that weighed 3,708 pounds.

“I had tears in my eyes when I was coming back a couple of times because you’re sitting there and you thought about that moment so many times, you know, how it would feel and how it would look like," he said in 2012, per CNN. “And this is way bigger than I had anticipated."