New “Women of NASA” Lego Immortalizes the STEM Contributions of Sally Ride, Margaret Hamilton, Mae Jemison & Nancy Grace Roman

Ear­li­er this year, the Lego com­pa­ny announced that it would pro­duce a Women of NASA Lego set, based on a pro­pos­al it received from sci­ence writer Maia Wein­stock. In that pro­pos­al, Wein­stock wrote: “Women have played crit­i­cal roles through­out the his­to­ry of the U.S. space pro­gram, a.k.a. NASA or the Nation­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion. 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 (STEM).”

Now on the mar­ket, the new Lego set immor­tal­izes the con­tri­bu­tions of NASA astro­nauts Sal­ly Ride and Mae Jemi­son; astronomer Nan­cy Grace Roman; and com­put­er sci­en­tist Mar­garet Hamil­ton, who we fea­tured here this past sum­mer. The video above gives you a com­plete walk-through, show­ing you, for exam­ple, Hamil­ton stand­ing next to the large pile of source code that pow­ered the Apol­lo mis­sion (just as she did in this his­toric pho­to). Or you’ll see Nan­cy Grace Roman accom­pa­nied by a pos­able Hub­ble Space Tele­scope and a pro­ject­ed image of a plan­e­tary neb­u­la. The video clos­es with some com­men­tary on the social mer­its of this new Lego set, which you may or may not agree with.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty to Cre­ate a Lego Pro­fes­sor­ship

The LEGO Tur­ing Machine Gives a Quick Primer on How Your Com­put­er Works

Two Scenes from Stan­ley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, Recre­at­ed in Lego