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By Robert Hiltz

Two Toronto high-school students have sent a flag-carrying Lego man to the final frontier — or pretty close to it, anyway.

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Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad used a weather balloon to send the wee figure into the far reaches of the atmosphere, along with several video and still cameras to document the journey.

They made sure a video camera was pointed at the small Lego figure as it made its ascent high above the Earth’s surface. The figure, positioned on a plank holding a Maple Leaf, can be seen where it begins its journey in a wintry Toronto-area park.

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Near the apex of the journey, the familiar blue sky gives way to an inky black, just before the balloon bursts and Ho’s and Muhammad’s rig starts its descent. The video and equipment eventually were recovered after falling back down to Earth.

An astrophysicist at the University of Toronto, Michael Reid, said what Ho and Muhammad were able to achieve is extraordinary.

“There are people that are doing it, but I haven’t seen many examples of 17-year-old kids doing it,” Reid said. “It’s a pretty impressive accomplishment.”

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