These are the days that LEGO shines, when the tiny blocks create something as wonderful as the Mars Curiosity Rover. The company announced the plans to sell the sets earlier this week.
We are coming up on the one-year anniversary of the Mars rover Curiosity’s mission launch, the most successful rover ever to hit the illusive Red Planet. LEGO Group allowed fans to decide the design of the toy-version, choosing their favorite and moving it into production. Tim Courtney form LEGO stated on the company blog, “The product aligns well with the LEGO Group’s mission to ‘inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow,’ including those who will build our future in outer space.”
According to the official rules, all of the fan-submitted models had to first surpass 10,000 votes before going on to the next phase. The winning design was from Stephen Pakbaz, a mechanical engineer that had an inside track with NASA. Pakbaz worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he worked on the design and testing of actual rover. With that kind of background we hope that this version will still analyze smaller LEGOs and send back data to explain why they are the most painful thing to step on in the universe.
