Lt Col Satyendra Verma BASE Jumps as part of Centenary Celebrations

BASE jumping, also sometimes written as B.A.S.E jumping, is an activity that employs an initially packed parachute to jump from fixed objects. "B.A.S.E." is an acronym that stands for four categories of fixed objects from which one can jump: buildings, antennae, spans (bridges), and earth (cliffs).

The acronym "B.A.S.E." was coined by filmmaker Carl Boenish, his wife Jean Boenish, Phil Smith, and Phil Mayfield. Carl was the real catalyst behind modern BASE jumping, and in 1978, he filmed the first BASE jumps to be made using ram-air parachutes and the freefall tracking technique (from El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park). While BASE jumps had been made prior to that time, the El Capitan activity was the effective birth of what is now called BASE jumping. BASE jumping is significantly more dangerous than similar sports such as skydiving from aircraft, and is currently regarded by many as a fringe extreme sport or stunt.

BASE numbers are awarded to those who have made at least one jump from each of the four categories (buildings, antennas, spans and earth). When Phil Smith and Phil Mayfield jumped together from a Houston skyscraper on 18 January 1981, they became the first to attain the exclusive BASE numbers (BASE #1 and #2, respectively), having already jumped from an antenna, spans, and earthen objects. Jean and Carl Boenish qualified for BASE numbers 3 and 4 soon after. A separate "award" was soon enacted for Night BASE jumping when Mayfield completed each category at night, becoming Night BASE #1, with Smith qualifying a few weeks later.

The Indian Army's sports sky diving team introduced the extreme adventure sport of base jumping to India as its captain Lt Col Satyendra Verma jumped off a TV tower in the national capital on Friday.

The country witnessed its first legal base jump as Lt Col Verma jumped from a height of 235 metre in Pitampura as part of the centenary year (February 2010-2011) celebrations of the Corps of Signals.

Verma, an adventure enthusiast and expert in hand-gliding, paragliding, hot air ballooning, skydiving and base jumping, has been part of over 1,100 free fall jumps done by the army's sky diving team. He has participated in World Military Parachuting Championship in Russia in 2006 and has also performed base jump from KL Tower in Kuala Lampur.
Lt Col Verma jumped from a height of 235 metre in Pitampura as part of the centenary year (February 2010-2011) celebrations of the Corps of Signals