American adventurer Steve Fossett appears to only be a few hours away from knocking down one of aviation’s last barriers – flying solo around the world in a balloon.
With more than 95 percent of the trip behind him, he is cruising nearly 9,000 meters above sea level at about 300 kilometers an hour as he races towards Western Australia, where he is expected to land sometime Tuesday. He will finish when he crosses the one-hundred-seventeenth line of longitude. He then hopes to land safely several hours later in southwest Australia.
The flight is Mr. Fossett’s sixth attempt at circling the globe.
The 58-year-old millionaire from Chicago lifted off from western Australia on June 18th and broke his own solo distance record Sunday when he approached the 23,000 kilometer mark on his current trip. He set the previous record in 1998 before crashing into the Coral Sea, off Australia’s northeast coast.
Mr. Fossett nearly died several times during his previous attempts, including a crash landing in Russia in 1997.
The Swiss-English team of Bertrand Picard and Brian Jones – who successfully completed a balloon flight around the world in 1999 – called Mr. Fossett to congratulate him in his final hours of realizing his dream.
