'And you don't have to just manhandle the elevons. And so I thought, let's see if they got the elevons right - they operate opposite each other. 'On the space shuttle, it's a combination of an elevator and an aileron, called an elevon. 'A lot of people look at the trailing edge of the shuttle's wing and think of it as the traditional elevator like you see on the backend of an airplane's wing,' she said.

Sullivan was also surprised to find that the model features not only the vertical stabilizer- or tail-mounted speed brake, but also the elevons, the control surfaces on the orbiter's wings. 'So I leave it to the intrepid modeler to determine if there are two spacesuited figures locked inside that airlock just like there were on Discovery on the day of the deploy.' 'And for all I know, Bruce and I are represented inside that airlock, which is where we were stuck when Hubble was deployed,' said Sullivan with a laugh. Below that, the middeck includes the crew's equipment lockers and the airlock leading into the payload bay. The crew cabin opens to reveal the flight deck with the orbiter's control panels and crew seats. Generally, in a LEGO model we can rely on the size to accommodate the structure that holds the whole set together, but on the Discovery Space Shuttle we needed to create a smooth exterior and an interior capable of holding the payload.' 'In the real vehicle, every inch of space is used in ingenious ways. 'Translating this into LEGO was an exciting challenge,' Milan Madge, who led the design of the set for the Denmark-based toy company, said in a statement. The landing gear deploys, the control surfaces on the wings (elevons) move and the payload bay doors open to expose the reflective radiators, the Canadarm robotic manipulator, the Ku-band antenna and even video cameras for the 'crew' to monitor the activities outside. (NASA)ĭesigned with adult builders in mind, the LEGO NASA Space Shuttle Discovery packs a lot of detail into that two-foot (0.5 m) package. 'I hadn't known what to expect in terms of how large Discovery would be,' Sullivan said about her first time seeing the new LEGO set. Sullivan flew as a mission specialist on Discovery's STS-31 mission in 1990, giving her a front row seat for the deployment of the observatory. 'I always liked that combination of very compact, almost miniature, but very elegantly detailed, and I think that's exactly what the Hubble model within this set reminded me of,' astronaut Kathy Sullivan said in an interview with collectSPACE.Īnd she would know. LEGO on Monday (March 22) revealed its new NASA Space Shuttle Discovery set, which not only replicates its full-size counterpart in amazing detail, but does so as it was configured for one of its most well-known and historic missions: the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. Once described as the most complex flying machine ever built, comprised of more than 2.5 million moving parts, you can now assemble your own model of NASA's space shuttle using just 2,354 pieces.

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