Aidan Gillen is by now best known for playing ambitious men, particularly on critically acclaimed HBO series. On Game of Thrones, he plays the conniving Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish, and on The Wire, he played conflicted politician Tommy Carcetti. So Polish digital effects company Platige Image and the European Space Agency probably figured he was uniquely suited for their new short film Ambition. The short, which debuted at the British Film Institute's Sci-Fi: Days of Fear and Wonder celebration this week, features Gillen and Irish actress Aisling Franciosi as they look back on one of mankind's major missions into space, all while they create planetoids and comets with only their minds.

The short actually celebrates the Rosetta spacecraft, which this August managed to successfully reach and orbit a comet for the first time — truly the fruit of some outsized ambition. And the work isn't over yet; next month, the Rosetta craft will release a lander onto the comet's surface and run tests for water.