ROSWELL, NM (NEWS1130) – A weather hold that threatened to cancel extreme athlete and skydiver Felix Baumgartner’s death-defying 37 kilometre free fall into the southeastern New Mexico desert has been lifted.

The planned 7 a.m. launch was delayed by high winds. But just before 9 a.m., the winds calmed and the team decided to proceed with plans to begin the launch, a process that takes about two hours.

So what actually happens when a person free falls from 37 kilometres? Baumgartner will hopefully find out during his jump from the edge of space sometime today.

Jonathan Clark is heading up the Austrian skydiver’s medical team.

“If you’re going to be above 50,000 feet you wear a pressure suit, or a capsule, above 63,000 feet that’s the layer where water in a liquid state at body temperature spontaneously boils,” Clark explains.

The 43-year-old skydiver will travel into the sky in a balloon. When he does reach the stratosphere, he’ll hurtle himself toward earth, at which point he is expected to reach speeds of more than 1,100 km/h before deploying his parachute.

One of the major risks is that any tear or minor rip in his pressurized suit could expose him to a lack of oxygen and temperatures as low as 70 degrees below zero.

“Three or four minutes of exposure is still survivable, it’s not going to be pretty, he’ll have severe lung damage, but we have three teams positioned around the landing site so that we can get to him very quickly,” Clark says.

The energy-drink maker Red Bull is sponsoring the feat and is promoting a live Internet stream of the event here.

There will be a 20-second delay in the broadcast in case anything goes wrong.

Baumgartner’s dive from the stratosphere is expected to provide scientists with valuable information for next-generation spacesuits.

Rogers Sportsnet will have exclusive Canadian coverage of the event, that has been five years in the making.