New LEGO Set Honors NASA’s Female Pioneers

For all their exemplary qualities, the LEGOs of yesteryear did have one flaw: the minifigures were predominantly male. In recent years, however, there’s been a notable uptick in female-focused sets, thanks in large part to fan-created concepts promoted through LEGO Ideas. One such project is the Women of NASA, a LEGO set celebrating some of the space agency’s most notable female figures that was posted to the LEGO Ideas last summer and has just been released for sale by the brick toy company.

The four notable NASA pioneers honored in the set are: computer scientist Margaret Hamilton, who played a major role in coding the flight software for the Apollo missions; famed first woman in space, Sally Ride; the "Mother of Hubble" Nancy Grace Roman; and astronaut and physician Mae Jemison, the first African American woman in space. (The original proposal also included Katherine Johnson, the mathematician at the center of Hidden Figures, but the company was reportedly not able to secure the needed approvals to feature her in the final set.)

The minifigures were created with set pieces like Hamilton’s stacks of code, scientific instruments, a microscale Hubble Space Telescope, a space shuttle, and more. The long-awaited 231-piece set officially went on sale on November 1; you can purchase it on Amazon for $24.99.