The next Lego toy to hit store shelves will honor female scientists in a new set entitled “Women of NASA”.
Submitted as a proposal on Lego’s community and ideas page by Maia Weinstock, the set is designed to feature five female scientists in a desktop frame, along with calculating instruments, a microscale Hubble Space Telescope and a mini space shuttle.
“Women have played critical roles throughout the history of the [United Space] space program, a.k.a. NASA or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,” Weinstock wrote in her proposal. “Yet in many cases, their contributions are unknown or under-appreciated – especially as women have historically struggled to gain acceptance in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.”
Weinstein’s project beat 11 other proposals that were vetted by the Lego Review Board.
The women depicted include a NASA computer scientist, astronomer, astronauts and mathematician.
Details on pricing and availability will be released late this year or early 2018.
The set comes on the heels of the Oscar-nominated film “Hidden Figures” which tells the true story of how three female African-American scientists helped launch astronaut John Glenn into orbit in the 1960s. JB
