Lego has blessed your quest for a birthday gift for your favorite young (or, for that matter, full grown) female STEM enthusiast, rolling out a 231-piece “Women of NASA” set.
The AP reports that the set will include pioneering astronauts Sally Ride and Mae Jemison, astronomer and “Mother of the Hubble Telescope” Nancy Grace Roman, and computer scientist Margaret Hamilton. (The original plans included Katherine Johnson, whose story is told in Hidden Figures, but Lego says she declined to participate.)
The set was originally proposed by MIT’s Maia Weinstock, who said in a comment in Lego’s announcement: “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.”
It’s due out November 1; my condolences to the first proud and supportive parent to step on one of the parts in the middle of the night. It’ll make a great laugh line in their Nobel acceptance speech!