LEGO Announces a Women of NASA Set

LEGO! It’s nice to see you upping your game. Your latest set proposal is out of this world — literally — and we can’t wait until it hits the shelves.

LEGO is developing a Women of NASA set featuring women who have made huge contributions to the U.S. space program over the years. The final design isn’t available yet, but the figure lineup includes Sally Ride (first American woman in space) and mathematician Katherine Johnson, who was portrayed to perfection this year by Taraji P. Henson in the Oscar-nominated movie Hidden Figures.

LEGO’s hoping this set will be a hit with space-minded kids (especially girls) interested in STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The very cool Women of NASA set was created as part of LEGO Ideas, a site that allows fans and LEGO users to propose ideas for new LEGO sets. This project was the brainchild of MIT News writer and science editor Maia Weinstock. Weinstock’s concept beat out 11 other projects in the LEGO Ideas competition — each had to receive votes from 10,000 supporters to make it to the next level.

Thrilled to finally share: @LegoNASAWomen has passed the @LEGOIdeas Review and will soon be a real LEGO set! https://t.co/rcyjANsVD9pic.twitter.com/b9OVx5UBaL

— Maia Portell Weinstock ✨ (@20tauri) February 28, 2017

We do have one little tiny bone to pick. The project’s LEGO Ideas page reads, “Ladies rock outer space!” We could do without the prissy word choice of “ladies.” Is it really so hard to say “Women rock outer space”? Still, we’re excited to get our hands on the final product.

More: New LEGO campaign highlights the importance of imaginative play for kids

Who else is in the Women of NASA lineup? Well, we’re so glad you asked. Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space; Margaret Hamilton, a brilliant computer scientist; and Nancy Grace Roman, known as the badass “Mother of Hubble” for her work on the Hubble Space Telescope.

Next time we step on a LEGO, we’re totally going to yell MOTHER OF HUBBLE.

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Weinstock is over the moon (heh) that LEGO is going forward with her concept. She feels it’s “critical to have toys that girls can look at and play with and think, ‘that’s me!’ or ‘that could be me!'” Weinstock also said, “I also just hope that girls and boys will take away from it the sense that women belong in engineering, in mathematics… I hope in some small way, it helps to inspire the kids of the future.”