BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy NASA Women in Lego

Achievements may be honored with prizes and medals, but few get represented as children's toys. However Lego responded to a proposal to showcase women in space and astronomy by making a Lego set representing four such women and their major contributions. Who were these women?

NASA Women in Lego

Maia Weinstock made the proposal to Lego for the Women of NASA set. Tara Wike and Gemma Anderson were the Lego designers who did the final design for the set. Wike was able to present the final deisgn to Weinstock and to computer scientist Margaret Hamilton. From left,Margaret Hamilton, Tara Wike and Maia Weinstock after the final design presentation.

Here is Margaret Hamilton in 1969, standing next to the navigation software that she and her MIT team produced for the Apollo project. On the left is Hamilton's Lego figure.

Margaret Hamilton's figure is a Lego version of the photo of her with a stack of books representing the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) onboard flight software source code. [See the previous comment in this thread.]

The mini-figure of Nancy Grace Roman - who is also known as the Mother of Hubble -
has a model of the Hubble Space Telescope to go with it.

In this video segment, Nancy Roman talks about astronomy before Hubble and the development of the space telescope in its 25th year. Astronomers instrumental in the Hubble project in the 60s and 70s reflect on how the design of the telescope was forced to evolve because methods used by ground-based observatories weren't practical in space.

It's hard to imagine now that pre-Hubble many astronomers were against spending so much money on a space telescope instead of building more high-quality observatories on Earth.

The original proposal included a 5th figure, but Katherine Johnson's consent wasn't received. Here is the set of five women of NASA as conceived. From left to right, It's Margaret Hamilton, Katherine Johnson, Sally Ride, Nancy Roman and Mae Jemison.

Here are the astronauts, Sally Ride and Mae Jemison, along with their Lego figures.

Sally Ride is probably the better known because she was the first American woman in space. (Two Soviet women had preceded her. However Mae Jemison was the first woman of color to go into space.

Being an astronaut was only a small part of each woman's career, both being very talented in many fields.

the figures are so cool.