Lego’s ongoing effort to create impressively detailed sets of replicas for older builders makes it harder to be a fiscally responsible adult. To help celebrate NASA’s latest success with landing another rover on Mars, The new LEGO Discovery Space Shuttle commemorates one of the previous achievements of the space agency: the launch of Hubble S.rhythm Ttelescope 30 years ago.
This year also marks the 40th anniversary of NASA’s Space Shuttle program, so Lego chose Discovery appropriately for this set, as no other spacecraft has performed so many spaceflights and transported as many astronauts as possible. Discovery was also NASA’s first withdrawn space shuttle, and while visiting the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Air and Space at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center to see it in person remains a challenge during an active pandemic, the new 2,354-piece replica of Lego is the next best thing.
Designed on the 1:70 scale of the real spaceship, the latest Lego version of Discovery (the toy manufacturer has already produced several Discovery sets) is the largest to date, measuring nearly 22 inches long, with a wingspan of over 13.5 inches. This scale allowed Lego designers to include a lot of additional features this time, including retractable landing gear, retractable Canadarm, a rudder that splits in two to serve as an air brake during landings, work elevators, and a cargo space in which the detailed model of the Hubble Space Telescope is equally located can take a walk.
Lego designers seemed to have put in as much work to make an exact replica of Hubble T.telescope like the shuttle carrying him. It is covered with 108 silver elements – the most ever included in a single lego set – and has an opening and closing door that reveals the optics inside, as well as solar panels that can be attached once the telescope is removed from the Discovery compartment. . The telescope even has a detachable component for those who want to recreate the various maintenance missions from 1993 to 2009 that helped give Hubble a second life.
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As with many sets of models for adults, Lego includes mounts that allow the Discovery space shuttle and the Hubble Space Telescope to be displayed separately, and a third mount that can be mounted inside the spacecraft’s cargo hold so that it can be displayed together. Availability is is expected to begin on April 1, 2021, with a price of 200 USD.