Toronto Teens Send Lego Minifig to Space

Lego Minifig in Space

Two young makers from Toronto, Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, both age 17, successfully sent a Lego minifig and four cameras to roughly 78,000 feet elevation on a homemade weather balloon. After a 97-minute flight, the balloon returned to Earth with great footage of the journey.

Inspired by a similar project done by MIT students, they were determined to make everything from scratch, down to sewing the 5-foot-diameter parachute. After about five months worth of weekends devoted to the build, they did it, and have some great photos to show for their hard work. Check out the video posted on the Toronto Star to hear them talk about their project and to see their balloon pics.

[Thanks Rachel!]

12 Responses to Toronto Teens Send Lego Minifig to Space

  1. Roy Maybery on said:

    I am guessing that helium was used, though i might be wrong about that. However if so, It has occured to me that more altitude might be achieved if hydrogen was substituted. It is little flamible perhaps on an oxygen atmosphere but who cares once it is at high altitude where ther is little or none.
    Roy Maybery

  2. Pingback: Toronto teens send Lego minifig into space « Blunt Object

  3. What would happen if this went through an aircraft’s engine?

    • Depends on what kind of aircraft. A propeller would just shred it and fly on, but a turbine might suffer some serious damage. That’s why the FAA and other aviation regulators require high-altitude balloon launchers to get clearance first, so they can issue a warning to air traffic in the area. If someone got proper clearance and conducted the launch as scheduled, but a plane flew into the balloon anyway, liability would be on the pilot.

  4. Pingback: La figura de Lego que ascendió a 25 km de altura | Noticias CEU

  5. Pingback: Lego Minifig in Space of the Day - TDW Geeks

  6. Pingback: Teens Photograph Lego Figure on Edge of Space for $400

  7. Pingback: Kids Shoot LEGO Figure Into Space | Kotaku Australia

  8. Pingback: Putting the GIF in TGIF! | The Nanigans

  9. Pingback: Teens Photograph Lego Minifigure at Edge of Space for $400 | fozbaca’s WordPress

  10. Pingback: Kids Shoot LEGO Into Space « thegonzowire

  11. Pingback: This is a problem with a very easy solution « Blunt Object

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s