Only 13 more days until you can buy the Women of NASA LEGO set
The upcoming LEGO set hits shelves Nov. 1 and will include pioneer spacewomen Sally Ride and Mae Jemison.
Just in time for holiday gift-giving, LEGO announced today the sale date for the fan-designed Women of NASA set. You can purchase it will be Nov. 1. (Okay, maybe it’s a bit early for Christmas lists, but we’ll make an exception in this case.)
The set was designed to bring attention to the historically under-appreciated work of women in STEM fields. It will include five women whose work at NASA was particularly influential: Margaret Hamilton, a computer scientist; Katherine Johnson, a mathematician; Sally Ride, an astronaut; Nancy Grace Roman, an astronomer; and Mae Jemison, an astronaut. Additionally, the set will come equipped with a to-scale miniature version of the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as a mini space shuttle equipped with rocket boosters, all which look pretty freaking sweet.
LEGO ideas
The project’s designer, science writer Maia Weinstock, submitted the design to LEGO Ideas. It is a platform run by The LEGO Group on which any user can submit designs for sets they want to see made. If a proposal gains 10,000 supporters on the site, it will be reviewed by a team at the company. Only a few of these gain official approval, at which point the design is refined by a team and scheduled for release.
In this case, Weinstock’s proposal gained over 10,000 supports in just 15 days. Then, designers Gemma Anderson and Marie Sertillanges helped perfect Weinstock’s design. They ensured it could be LEGO-ified, focusing on stability and scale.
As Sertillanges states on the Lego website, the team of designers took great care to make the figures match the details of the real-life women who inspired them. For example, Sally Ride requested her space suit’s name tag simply say “Sally,” instead of her full name, and her Lego representation will stay true to this request.
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Be still my space-loving, feminist heart.