The people behind “Space Explorers: THE INFINITE” want you to know that this virtual reality experience is next level — in every way.

Even though you are earthbound here on the big blue marble, you will still be able to feel like you’re floating along with astronauts, taking in the same visuals that only a relative few firsthand space cadets have seen before as you roam around a state-of-the-art, virtual 3D replica of the International Space Station (ISS).

Think of it as your very own space odyssey, but all within the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach, from June 4-Sept. 2.

“It really is an experience like no other,” says Felix Lajeunesse, one of the co-founders of Felix & Paul Studios, the main production company behind the event. “There is nothing else in the world right now that is like that. And it’s gonna take years before anyone else gets the opportunity to capture that amount of extraordinary footage in space and bring that back to Earth.”

Shot over a period of roughly three years, from 2018 to 2021, the Montreal-based company produced more than 250 hours of virtual reality footage. The resulting immersive storytelling allows you to walk around the virtual International Space Station (ISS). You’ll see floating orbs that, once activated, envelope you and “transport” you into a full 360-degree cinematic environment that was captured by the astronauts. Each orb shows you a different vantage point where the camera was inside the real space station, so you can design your own journey.

Also a dozen international astronauts talk to you, sharing everything from how they work inside a module to just relaying their own experiences.

“This is not like a traditional, immersive show where you see projections on the wall,” Lajeunesse adds. “It’s a fully immersive experience … in which you embody this avatar and you see the people in your group as fellow avatars and you sort of recognize each other. And then you go together to explore this outer space world. It’s not like another science center show about space. It’s an emotional experience. It will impact you.”

Admission to Space Explorers: THE INFINITE is $45-$50 for adults, $35-$40 for students and $25-$30 for children ages 8-12. To order, call 561-832-7469 or go to kravis.org.

Here is more about the VR event in a Q&A with Lajeunesse.

QUESTION: Is it true that the viewers also get to go on a spacewalk?

ANSWER: “After you’ve explored the International Space Station, you cross a virtual portal and you’re invited to sit inside of the very comfortable seating that is there virtually and physically. So you sit on a real chair … and then you experience a 10 minute spacewalk, which was filmed outside of the International Space Station by placing a virtual reality camera on the robotic arm of the ISS and the robotic arm was following two astronauts in the vacuum of space as they’re doing maintenance operations. It’s a very beautiful sequence. You can witness the astronauts but if you look down, there’s planet Earth in its entirety — the same point of view that an astronaut would have. If you look around you will see the movement and you will see the world as they see it. Nothing was faked. It’s as is.”

Q: How did all of this get started and how did this win an Emmy Award?

A: “The initial vision was to create a series of virtual reality series that would be distributed at home for people that have access to VR technology, which to this day remains a growing but relatively small ecosystem. When we started to receive the footage from space and review what we were doing in virtual reality, we just couldn’t believe it. It was so special and the astronauts were so generous in opening the doors of the space station and their level of commitment and engagement to the project, really talking to the virtual reality camera on board as if it was a fellow crew member and you know, the feeling of this kinship, this intimacy that the medium provided. It felt so powerful. (Initially) we produced a four-part VR series called ‘Space Explorers: The ISS Experience,’ which won a Primetime Emmy Award.

Q: Your website says that you worked with NASA in Houston, but did you ever spend any time at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center?

A: “When you walk out of the virtual reality experience … there’s a large scale video that shows the next steps of human spaceflight, the Artemis program. And of course the Artemis launches are done from Kennedy Space Center. And so we repeatedly traveled to Florida to produce that footage.”

Q: Can you explain how Florida’s contribution with the Artemis program was born out of the ISS program and how that figures into “Space Explorers: THE INFINITE?”

A: “The Space Station has been 20 years of human presence in space. So humans have been learning to live in space for longer periods of times. And the vision of the ISS is like camping in the backyard, in a way. You start by camping in the backyard and when you’re ready, when you’ve tested everything, then you can go camping on Mount Everest. And so, low Earth orbit is considered the backyard compared to deep space, which starts with the moon and extends into infinity. The Space Station is 400 kilometers from the surface of the Earth. The Moon is 400,000 kilometers. And then Mars is 4 million kilometers. So none of what NASA is getting ready to do with the Artemis program would be possible were it not for the learnings of the International Space Station. So we felt like we need to connect the dots … giving the audience a sense of perspective of what they’ve experienced with the crew onboard. It enables the future and here’s what the future looks like. All of that was captured at (Florida’s) Kennedy Space Center.”

Q: You have this tagline for the show that reads “It stays with you.” What does that mean to you?

A: “What it means to me is that ‘The Infinite’ is an experience, a profound experience in the sense that you get an opportunity … to experience watching your home-world planet Earth from the perspective of astronauts 250 miles away from the Earth where you have this experience of the ‘overview effect.’ At this point in time, maybe 400 people have been to space in the history of humanity and all of the people, regardless of where they come from, and regardless of when they did it over the past 60 years, come back and talk about what it feels like to look back at planet Earth. And witnessing how thin and fragile the atmosphere is. How fragile this ecosystem looks, how precious it looks. And then you turn around and you realize that everything else that you can see in the rest of the universe is dead. There is no life there that we can see. The moon is a piece of rock. The sun is a ball of fire. There’s no life there. Life is all concentrated on that little ball floating right in front of you. And there’s just this profound feeling of connection. I feel like we managed to capture some of it. I will never contend that immersive technology replaces the experience of being there for real, but I will certainly contend that it’s the closest thing that you could ever get from it, short of going to space yourself. And so people who come and see the show … they talk about it. They say it’s just like, ‘I had this feeling and it stayed with me.’ It came from audiences talking to us about the experience they had and then saying, ‘Look, I want to go back and see the show again. I want to do it again because I want to reconnect with that feeling. I want to see more of it. There’s just something that stayed with me.’ We just thought that’s how we need to talk about the show because that’s what is true about the show.”

Q: How did you get all this access to the space program?

A: “Before we did this, we worked with President Obama on two virtual reality projects in 2016, back to back. We did ‘The People’s House’ and ‘Through The Ages (President Obama Celebrates America’s National Parks).” We went back to Washington, D.C., to present them to people there. We started to meet with NASA executives who were impressed with the project. That opened doors. So we did two episodes of what became The Space Explorer series, which was filmed on Earth. And it just felt like the natural progression of that story, to continue the journey to space. We started to socialize that idea at NASA and by the time we came up with an entire proposal and game plan for this, we had already worked with them for two years. And we had worked with respectable institutions before. We had a track record. We were serious people who wanted to do something complex. And that’s the story.”