Project Star Gazer’s Balloon Reached an Altitude of 82,000 feet (25 kilometers)

On December 13, 1962, Navy astronomer William White and Air Force Captain Joseph Kittinger stepped into a small steel capsule attached to a nearly 300-foot-tall mylar balloon.

Over the course of the next 18.5 hours, the balloon climbed to a staggering 82,000 feet (25 kilometers) in altitude and drifted above the desert.

Project Stargazer was a U.S. military experiment that used a high-altitude balloon to perform astronomical observations, essentially testing the feasibility of conducting astronomy from a manned balloon by floating above most of the Earth’s atmosphere to get clearer views of stars.