Lego is back with another new amazing spacecraft build set. This time, it’s a fairly realistic replica of the International Space Station, the orbiting laboratory helmed by NASA and more than a dozen countries all over the world. To celebrate the new creation, the Lego team sent the tiny ISS made out of Lego bricks to the stratosphere using a giant weather balloon in order to get it “as close as possible to the real ISS.”
Lego claims it asked NASA experts to approve the final design for the build, according to a short video announcing the new set. True to Lego form, the mini-ISS comes complete with various attachments and details that the real space station uses and interacts with every day. The Lego ISS sports the vehicle’s eight distinct solar arrays, which are used to gather power from the Sun. There’s also an airlock hatch for tiny Lego astronauts to leave the station and perform spacewalks. The set even comes with small spacecraft needed to transport crew and cargo to the ISS, representing the Russian Soyuz capsule and the commercial vehicles that do so today.
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