Lego Found a Genius Way to Celebrate Moon Landing Anniversary

The 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing is just around the corner and NASA’s definitely been preparing for it since a long time ago, considering the long list of events it has been steadily easing into since the beginning of May. 

The space agency even launched a crowdsourcing program that aims to gather up stories from those who watched the Moon landing as it happened, in order to create an oral history of the event. 

And Lego too, found its own way to celebrate the event that launched America and the world, into a new era: with a 1,087 Creator kit of the Apollo 11 lunar lander. The kit even includes two astronauts, which we can guess represent Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, that you can fit inside the main module. 

Lego worked with designer Lars Joe to create it and Joe in turn, worked with NASA, who provided him with all the necessary details about the module, details that were necessary to create a replica as close to the original as possible. One of the things that might confuse some, for example, are the gold bricks set on the descent section: they actually represent the heat shields that were set up on the real lander. 

Other interesting details are a rocket with all the equipment inside, a nameplate, footprints and even a sticker replica of the plaque Armstrong and Aldrin left on the moon. 

The Lego Creator expert NASA Apollo 11 Lunar Lander is aimed at ages 16+, measures 7 inches high and will become available for $99,99 in the Lego stores and the official Lego store on June 1st. 

The Apollo 11 kit is not the only one of its kind being launched on the same date though: Lego will also introduce no less than seven space-related building sets, inspired by NASA’s plans to land and colonize Mars.

One of them is the Space Research and Development kit with 209 pieces that features a g-force training machine, a treadmill and a robot stand.

The set showcases just a small number of the jobs that the future colonizers will have to partake in in order to explore space – some of the jobs portrayed by the kit are a drone engineer, rocket engineer and a botanist. 

However, the largest of the seven counts almost as many pieces as the Apollo 11 set. At 1,055 pieces, the Rocket Assembly and Transport kit features a launch rocket sitting atop a special crawler that brings it along towards the launch pad and all the other ground control crew the mission might need to make the launch happen.