When Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner set numerous records by jumping 128,100 feet to earth from a balloon, he relied upon equipment developed by the U.S. Army. When Baumgartner leaped, his rig included a device called the Equivital Life Monitor, which was built by the Research Institute of Environmental Medicine’s Biophysical and Biomedical Modeling Division in Natick, Mass. The monitor kept tabs of Baumgartner’s heart and respiration rates, skin temperature, oxygen saturation, body position, and motion. The data was transmitted to Baumgartner’s ground-based team. The armed services use the device to monitor individual troops’ reactions to extreme temperature conditions and the effects of weighty gear.