Lego Women of NASA figures to debut in November

Lego is launching its latest set of mini-figures on 1 November: Women of NASA. It celebrates four people: Nancy Grace Roman, Margaret Hamilton, Sally Ride and Mae Jemison, who played important roles at the US space agency.

The idea originally came from journalist and producer Maia Weinstock, who suggested it on the Lego Ideas website, where Lego gets fans to come up with new ideas for products, and then vote on their favourites in the hope that they’ll get made.

In this case, the four mini-figures are getting three ‘builds’ for children to make: a posable Hubble Space Telescope for Nancy Grace Roman; a stack of book elements representing the Apollo Guidance Computer onboard flight software source code for Margaret Hamilton; and a launchpad and Space Shuttle Challenger for Sally Ride and Mae Jemison.

This isn’t just about (very) cool sets: Weinstock says there’s a very clear message for girls and women here:

“In all realms of science, engineering, and technology, pioneering women have historically been under-appreciated for their often groundbreaking work. We have also seen that when girls and women are given more encouragement in the STEM fields, they become more likely to pursue careers in these areas.

With this project, I wanted to spotlight a fantastic group of women who have made seminal contributions to NASA history. My dream would be to know that the first human on Mars — or an engineer or computer scientist who helped her get there — played with the LEGO Women of NASA as a child and was inspired to pursue a STEM career as a result.”

The new mini-figs and builds will go on sale on 1 November around the world. I hope they sell by the truckload.