Lego Man Goes to Nearer Space

NASA is spending $63 million per astronaut to send them to space on Russian rockets. But a pair of Toronto teens did it for $400. Okay, their astronaut was made of plastic and stood just a couple of inches tall. And he only made it about a quarter of the way to the internationally accepted boundary of outer space which is 62 miles or more than 328,000 feet in altitude.

So let’s say he went to nearer space like so many iPhones and other (ahem) electronics before him. Nevertheless this near space adventure captured the hearts and minds of thousands as well as some amazing images of the edge of space.

Gripping tightly to a Canadian flag, the first Lego man flew almost 16 miles straight up. The two teens who piloted the plastic man’s ride documented the hour-and-a-half-long journey, which has turned into a YouTube hit. And in just a few days Lego man’s Facebook page has gained thousands of fans.

Asad Muhammad and Mathew Ho say that initially they were inspired by photos they saw online of the curvature of the Earth. Ho tells NPR, “We figured if we could put our minds to it we could definitely achieve results by sending a homemade capsule to capture those stunning images.”

Muhammad was inspired by something similar at MIT and other YouTube videos. But he also gives credit to his Earth and Space science teacher, Steven Tors.

The Lego man made it to 85,000 feet — in the middle stratosphere – before the weather balloon popped and a homemade parachute returned him and his precious video cargo to Earth.

Four cameras — two still and two video — captured all the images of Lego man’s trip to the edge of space, which took 97 minutes. In addition to 97 minutes of video capturing the entire experience, Ho and Muhammad snapped over 1,500 digital images. They also included a cellphone with a GPS tracker app in the styrofoam cargo container housing the electronics.

Muhammad says, “It sent us the coordinates of its position and that’s basically how we tracked it down.” But for an hour of the decent the GPS tracker didn’t transmit any data. But then at about 6,000 feet the tracker started recording again, allowing the teens to find the Lego Man 97 miles from their Toronto area launch site.

In preparing for the flight the Agincourt Collegiate Institute seniors say that after filling a 12-foot weather balloon with helium, doing some final instrument checks, they launched the Lego man who rose at a rapid 27-feet per second.

But they had to wait a week to see if their experiment was a success. When they retrieved the Lego man the following weekend (it was too dark when they initially tried to find him and school prevented them from reacquiring their citizen science project right away) they say they jumped for joy. But they were scared and excited at the same time, wondering if the cameras captured good images.

They did.

Ho says the pictures show, “The curvature of the Earth and the blueness of our atmosphere and the ozone layer, complemented by the extreme blackness and darkness of space.” He adds, “We were blown away, inspired by the beauty of our Earth and nature.”

Muhammad says, “When we first saw those photos it really makes us think what we are really doing to our Earth and what it is when you look at it from the outside. And, it was really inspiring and emotional too.”

They say they both got goosebumps and were grateful to be able to look at the Earth from a different vantage point.

But these two budding space engineers are not the first to send a weather balloon to the edge of space just to see what it looks like.

Boy Scout troops and pioneering pranksters have been equipping weather balloons with payload containers housing inexpensive video cameras and GPS units and floating them to the edge of space for a few years — since the equipment has become inexpensive enough to be considered disposable if something goes awry.

The next goal for the two Toronto 17-year-olds is to complete 12th Grade.