Lego Launches 'Women in Space' Set That Honors Female Pioneers in Space
That's one giant leap for women-kind.
Lego released its “Women of NASA” set Wednesday, celebrating the female astronauts and engineers who pioneered work for NASA and the space industry.
The set, first announced Oct. 18, includes models of the Space Shuttle Challenger and Hubble Space Telescope, and four Lego figures: Nancy Grace Roman, who developed the Hubble telescope; Margaret Hamilton, who developed the Apollo spacecraft’s navigation system; Sally Ride, the first woman from the U.S. to fly in space; and Mae Jemison, the first black woman to fly in space.
Ahead of the release, LEGO hosted a meet-and-greet October 28 with the set’s designer, MIT News writer Maia Weinstock, at the company’s store in the Flatiron District. Those who showed up were able to score the LEGO set early and get it signed by Weinstock.
The creator of LEGO's Women of NASA set, Maia Weinstock, signs sets in New York for eager children.
On Twitter, Weinstock and the account for the Lego NASA Women set have tweeted out dozens of people who say they were up at midnight Wednesday to ensure they could snag their own NASA Women set before they sold out.
Lego is not the only one to recently pay tribute to the women vital to the space industry that have been under-appreciated or unnoticed. The Oscar-nominated movie Hidden Figures, released in 2016, told the story of black women treated as NASA’s human computers during the space race, doing innovate work that was crucial to reaching the moon. Weinstock’s original submission included Hidden Figures protagonist, but she was left out of the official set when Lego couldn’t get approval to include her.
The majority of LEGO’s recent space-focused sets have been based around Star Wars, with one big exception: Lego earlier this year released a massive model of NASA’s Saturn V rocket, which was used to take the Apollo astronauts to the moon. That set is exactly 1,969 figures to mark the year Neil Armstrong first took his small step and giant leap.
The Women in Space Lego set is available to purchase in retail stores and online for $24.99.
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