Scarborough students send Lego man into the stratosphere

Two Toronto high school chums have taken their love for science to new heights.

Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, both 17, figured out how to get a Lego man to boldly go where few have gone before — by launching him into space on a homemade spacecraft.

A YouTube video of the amazing voyage appears to show the Lego man proudly holding a Canadian flag as the world gradually drops away below him.

The Lego man can be seen soaring above the clouds and then floating in front of a glowing blue Earth before the balloon bursts and the plastic man begins descending.

Ho told reporters on Wednesday that watching videos of similar projects by students in other countries is what triggered their imagination.

“This is definitely plausible, we can pull this off, too, if we really put our minds to it,” he said.

The two Grade 12 students at Agincourt Collegiate Institute say they used a helium balloon they purchased online and a makeshift Styrofoam box to send the Lego man about 24 kilometres above the sea level.

The spacecraft, which cost less than $500 to make, was launched two weeks ago from a soccer pitch in Newmarket, Ont..

Four cameras attached to the spacecraft captured the amazing journey and a cellphone with a GPS device helped the teens locate their spacecraft after landing 90 minutes later on a field about 120 kilometres away.

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