Step number 337 in assembling Lego's new NASA Mars Rover Perseverance Technic model is to you install your name on the miniature robotic explorer — assuming, of course, you were one of the nearly 11 million people who signed up to fly on the real Perseverance now on the Red Planet.
The detail, which is represented as a decal, is just one of the ways that Lego designers accurately reproduced Perseverance down to even its finer points. The 1,132-piece building set, which went on sale for $99.99 at U.S. Lego Stores and on Lego.com on Tuesday (Aug. 1), is the product of a collaboration between the Denmark-based toy company and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, where the real six-wheeled vehicle was designed, built and, for the past 894 days since touching down in Jezero Crater, controlled from Earth.
"[That is] one of the details that's particularly meaningful to me," said Scott Hulme, a Mars public engagement specialist at JPL who helped the Lego team refine the Perseverance set, in an interview with collectSPACE.com. "We invited people to send their names to Mars and we inscribed them on a series of small chips — and 10.9 million people did that."
"These chips that exist now on Mars are just on a bridge piece over the back of the rover. The Lego rover reproduces the same installation." said Hulme. "You can even see the number of people who wrote in their names — explorers who decided they wanted to send their names to Mars."
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