"It was really a lot harder than I thought it was going to be," says Austrian Felix Baumgartner who broke the record for the highest ever skydive by leaping out of a balloon at a height of 39km.

"It was an incredible up and down today, just like it's been with the whole project," said Baumgartner, recounting his experience after the jump.

"First we got off with a beautiful launch and then we had a bit of drama with a power supply issue to my visor,” redbullstratos.com Monday quoted Baumgartner as saying.

Describing his record breaking jump from the stratosphere, he said: "The exit was perfect but then I started spinning slowly. I thought I'd just spin a few times and that would be that, but then I started to speed up. It was really brutal at times. I thought for a few seconds that I'd lose consciousness."

"I didn't feel a sonic boom because I was so busy just trying to stabilize myself. We'll have to wait and see if we really broke the sound barrier. It was really a lot harder than I thought it was going to be," he said.