Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko recently descended to Earth. And Kelly was the first astronaut to spend nearly a year on the International Space Station. But before returning on Tuesday (March 1), they left little, or even specifically speaking, a smaller version of the orbital outpost.
As shown by the crew assistant Type Piquet of the European Space Agency, the British astronaut kindly left small copies of himself, Kornienko and the rest of the crew at the station.
“Farewell to the expedition 46. Great honor and privilege to serve with such great crew members,” writes Piquet, sharing a photo of the crew of LEGO, to which, besides Kornienko and Kelly, added himself, NASA astronaut Tim Kopra and astronauts Roscosmos Yuri Malenchenko and Sergei Volkov.
Kelly, Kornienko and Volkov landed in Kazakhstan aboard the Soyuz TMA-18M capsule on Tuesday evening. Their landing put an end to the 340-day mission of Kelly and Kornienko, as well as Volkov’s 6-month stay at the space station.
In addition, it was a mark of the end of the 46th expedition to the station. Piqué location with Kopra and Malenchenko, as well as their mini doubles from LEGO, now continue the 47th expedition as crew members. All six copies of the crew of the 46th expedition from LEGO are dressed in suits for the Russian badges Sokol, which the real team wore when launching and descending from the space station. Each model has an Expedition or Mission Soyuz patch, the emblem of its space agency, a nation flag and a badge.
The figures also tried to do so that they fit the hairstyles (Kelly is bald, so he has no hairstyle at all), facial hair (the Kornienko figure has a mustache) and hair color (Piquet is red).
Two of them also have miniature photos. LEGO Kelly has a small version of the TIME magazine issue for December 29, 2014, with his face on the cover. And Tim Kopra's figure has a photo of the hockey player Nashvili Predators player Pekka Riné from the NHL, taken in March 2015.
The expedition of the 46th crew is the second team, which divided the orbital laboratory with 2-inch figures of itself from LEGO. Previously, the team of the 42nd expedition in January 2015 did it. NASA astronaut Terry Virts, astronaut Anton Shklaperov and Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti from EKA.
In both cases, the figures were made in the same British firm - Minifigs.me. Since 2015, the company offers miniature astronauts for sale. In December, Minifigs.me was the first to announce that they had made a LEGO figure for the first “official” cosmonaut of their country.
“Tim Piquet asked us to make these figures as gifts for his fellow crew members and took them with him,” the manufacturers wrote on Facebook.
Minifigs.me also released LEGO space models modeled for Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and the Apollo 13 crew, along with their flight director, Gene Krantz.
The company LEGO in projects Minifigs.me (which were inspired by astronauts and flights) did not take part. Although a separate Danish company collaborates with NASA and EKA, who buy their figures and sets of space stations and planetary research details as part of an educational partnership.
