Project Hail Mary Lego Set Photographed on the Edge of Space

Ryan Gosling’s character, Dr. Ryland Grace from Project Hail Mary, has found himself in space again — this time in Lego form.

A new Guinness World Record has been set by a company called Sent in Space after the Lego model featuring Dr. Grace and his alien pal Rocky floated up to space attached to a balloon.

The eight-hour spaceflight saw the Lego set reach 114,790 feet (34,988 meters) above Gwynedd County, U.K., on Friday, March 20. The Guinness World Records notes that it was a 22-mile (35-kilometer) long journey.

“For over eight hours, the minifigure spun amongst the blackness of space, witnessing the blue curvature of the planet and its cotton-like clouds, before falling back down to the green grass back on Earth,” the Guinness World Records say.

“Once on solid ground, the tiny toy was safely recovered — making this incredible trip the highest altitude launch and retrieval of a LEGO® set in Guinness World Records history.”

Project Hail Mary from Amazon MGM Studios has been a massive success. The crew built an actual spaceship to film in, which presented serious lighting challenges.

Cinematographer Greig Fraser revealed that when Dr. Grace first meets Rocky, he walks through a tunnel made of xenonite, which is a kind of solidified gas.

“We had to discover what this thing was,” Fraser told Variety. “The Sun has to come through it, but that provided a couple of challenges because this tunnel was 70 feet long.”

“We physically couldn’t get enough LEDs,” Fraser continued. “They’re all old school tungsten lights, and we pixel-mapped them, so it meant that the Sun can rotate around in any sort of configuration that we want.”

At the end of the film, when the credits roll, actual astrophotographs of deep space play on the screen. PetaPixel interviewed the photographer, Rod Prazeres, about how that all came about and his pride of seeing his work on the silver screen.

Image credits: Sony Pictures UK