At 04:56 UTC on May 15, 2026, a copy of Galileo’s 1610 astronomical treatise “Sidereus Nuncius” (“The Starry Messenger”), secured in a small satellite-like capsule attached to a set of stratospheric balloons, was launched from a field in Dülmen, Germany. By 07:21 UTC, the apparatus reached an altitude of 34,219 meters (112,267.72 feet), before plummeting back to solid ground and landing in the German town of Haltern am See, 13 miles from the dispatch site. The two-and-a-half-hour voyage was filmed with on-board cameras; but if you watch the resulting video, “The Starry Messenger” doesn’t appear to land in Germany. It drops into the hands of Broadway veteran Raúl Esparza.
This filmed capsule launch was actually part of the launch campaign for “Galileo,” the new musical about the Italian astronomer and mathematician Galileo Galilei which is preparing to touch down on Broadway. Performances begin on Nov. 10.
But it’s not just Galileo’s manifesto or Esparza that feature in the launch video, created by German film production company Stratoflights, which specializes in launching and filming objects at the edge of space. It’s the logo for the Broadway musical. After “The Starry Messenger” catapults into the atmosphere, Esparza stands in the middle of Times Square, catches the copy of “The Starry Messenger” and gazes heavenward. (Well, towards one of the district’s luminescent LED billboards.)
The pose mirrors the show’s key art, which features Esparza’s Galileo backlit like a human eclipse against a starry sky. That image, along with the other key art and this teaser trailer for the show, was captured last winter in the California studio of photographer Andrew Eccles, with assistance from production designer Ethan Tobman.
Eccles easily recalls the brief from Serino Coyne and the essential hypothesis of the shoot: “‘How do you make a scientist look like a rock star?’” The answer: a stadium’s worth of haze and lasers.
