Earlier this year, LEGO released a 1,969-piece Saturn V rocket Ideas set, which celebrated the vehicle that carried humanity to the Moon and back. Now, in a follow up that continues an awesome trend of looking to space for inspiration, LEGO is going to release a “Women of NASA” Ideas set that will be available to the public on November 1. The set includes four pioneering women who worked at NASA, as well as three builds that commemorate their most notable contributions to space exploration and the STEM fields.
The $24.99 231-piece set, which is seen in more detail in the image gallery below, includes minifigures of Nancy Grace Roman, Margaret Hamilton, Sally Ride, and Mae Jemison; four American women who helped to make human spaceflight and modern astronomy possible. Each featured woman made her own distinctive mark on the legendary space agency, as well as the fields of science, technology, engineering and math in general, by making discoveries, recording data, and pushing themselves to their physiological limits.
“Mother Hubble” Nancy Grace Roman helped to launch more than a dozen satellites into orbit, including the Hubble Space Telescope. Margaret Hamilton was the Director of the Software Engineering Division at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed software for the Apollo program that delivered astronauts to the Moon. Sally Ride was the first woman in space and a physics professor. Mae Jemison was the first black woman to travel into space, as well as a Peace Corps volunteer, a dancer, and the holder of nine honorary doctorates in letters, the humanities, science, and engineering.
Anyhoo, what have you been up to lately?
The three builds that illustrate the women’s achievements include a room where Hamilton and her team developed software programs for the Apollo missions, a posable Hubble Space Telescope (with an image of what looks to be a nebula), and NASA’s Space Shuttle.
Below, Ideas designer and MIT News Deputy Editor Maia Weinstock and in-house LEGO designer Tara Wike show off the set to Hamilton, who seems to like the way it turned out.
What do you think about this “Women of NASA” set? Should LEGO do a Peggy Whitson/Scott Kelly ISS set next, or maybe get a little spicy with a SpaceX BFR? Let us know in the comments below!
Images: LEGO
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