Joe Kittinger, Air Force colonel and longtime record-holder for highest parachute jump, dies at 94

Col. Joseph Kittinger, the space pioneer whose jump from a 20-mile-high gondola established a world record he held for decades, died this week at 94.

Kittinger was a colonel in the U.S. Air Force when he took part in the force’s Project Excelsior, a program designed to test parachute deployment at high altitudes, part of a series of initiatives to prepare American astronauts for spaceflight. 

The final jump in that program, in August of 1960, saw Kittinger jump from a balloon-floated gondola just under 20 miles above the surface of the Earth; in jumping he uttered the memorable line, “Lord, take care of me now.”

Kittinger held on to several world records related to that jump prior to the Red Bull Stratos project in 2012; he served as an advisor on that project. 

Kittinger’s cause of death was given as lung cancer.