Over the decades, LEGO has gained such major prominence as to partner with businesses and organizations outside the toy industry. In many of these team-ups, LEGO served as an accessible all-ages face and font of information. Case in point, LEGO is but one of many parties partnered with NASA for the historic Artemis 1 mission. This launch will send an unmanned spacecraft to orbit the moon, in anticipation for a future new manned lunar mission. A planned launch for Artemis 1 this August 29 was scrubbed due to technical issues, rescheduled for September 2. But already, LEGO stands among the many “passengers” in this trip.
Late last year, LEGO premiered the “Build to Launch” educational series in partnership with NASA and Artemis 1. As part of the promotion for this mission, LEGO included four astronaut minifigures. They’ll serve as the “crew” for the unmanned Orion test capsule. As Brick Fanatics tells it, Artemis 1 was supposed to launch Monday, August 29. However, launch preparation issues got things pushed back to this coming Friday instead. In the meantime, the LEGO Astronauts are staying put in Orion, which is mounted on NASA’s huge SLS rocket. They’re accompanied by a payload of multiple cube-satellites, life-sized astronaut dummies and a Snoopy doll, among others.
Of the minifigures, two (Julia and Sebastian) come from the most recent LEGO City space-themed set line. The other two (Kate and Kyle) are characters from the “Build to Launch” STEAM Exploration series. Meet Kate and Kyle before their jaunt aboard Artemis 1 by checking out the series here. As for the actual rocket launch, NASA will be live-streaming it on YouTube on September 2.