It’s a great time for Lego: there’s going to be a movie based on the building bricks, and the company just announced its latest set. As a part of Lego’s Cuusoo project, fans are able to send in designs and ideas for future Lego sets, and the Mars Curiosity rover won this round, beating out the USC Sandcrawler from Star Wars and the Portal-themed Lego set. The Mars Curiosity Lego set was submitted by Lego Cuusoo user Stephen Pakbaz (a.k.a. Perijove), who not only is an avid Lego enthusiast, but also is a mechanical engineer who actually worked on the team responsible for the Curiosity rover, so he had a lot of first-hand experience when designing and coming up with a Curiosity Lego set. The set got the necessary 10,000 votes that it takes to get Lego to consider making it into an official kit. Because of Pakbaz’s experience with the real Curiosity rover, he create the Lego model to be “as faithful to the actual rover as possible in terms of accuracy, details, and mechanical function, while remaining at a reasonable size and cost.”

He says that “the primary purpose of this effort has been to contribute to the educational outreach for this incredible mission.” In fact, Pakbaz already made eight of these new Lego sets by himself, since he says that his Curiosity Lego set design can be created using existing Lego pieces. He donated all eight sets to various museums and educational programs.lego shop 3182 Other Lego sets that have become official from the Cuusoo project include the Minecraft set, which we took a look at ourselves a while ago, as well as a Back to the Future set that was the last project to get green-lit by Lego before the Curiosity rover. cheap lego tableWe still have yet to hear more details about the Back to the Future set, and no pricing or availability information has been decided on yet for the Curiosity Lego set.buy lego bricks europe

The 2,000-pound NASA Mars Rover Curiosity landed on Mars early Monday morning to begin exploring the red planet's surface, but there's a lighter, smaller model back on Earth creating buzz at NASA's Kennedy Space Center and across the web. Lego Mindstorm NXT project builders Doug Moran and Will Gorman have created a Lego-version of the Curiosity rover, boasting more than 1,000 Legos and Bluetooth technology to control the device. lego shop alsaceThe model was built for the Build the Future in Space event at the Kennedy Space Center.lego shop free delivery The rover contains "thousands" of Lego Technic and Mindstorm bricks, six wheels (four of which are powered) and can make 360-degree turns. buy lego carpetIt is assembled entirely with Legos, so no glue was needed.

The rover's arm control can be accessed remotely via Bluetooth. SEE ALSO: Curiosity Rover Lands on Mars: Watch NASA Mission Control Go Crazy [VIDEO] This isn't the first time the team tackled a Lego-inspired Mars Rover. They presented the first version of the device when Curiosity launched at the Kennedy Space Center in November 2011. "We made major changes to the robot, including building a more robust chassis and wheels," the team said via its website. BONUS: Curiosity Lands on Mars: NASA’s Behind the Scenes Images Curiosity Rover Lands on MarsTry going back to the homepage Lego Ideas (formerly known as Lego Cuusoo) is a website started by Cuusoo and The Lego Group in 2008 which allows users to submit ideas for Lego products to be turned into potential sets available commercially, with the original designer receiving 1% of the royalties. Lego Ideas was first introduced as an offshoot of the Japanese website Cuusoo, produced as a collaboration between that company and The Lego Group.

Titled Lego Cuusoo, the site was labeled a beta site and remained so until the unveiling of Lego Ideas as a finished product. Users express their idea by combining a written description of the idea and a sample Lego model that demonstrates the concept into a project page. Once the page is published it is viewable to other users. The goal of every project is to be supported by 10,000 different users, which would then make the project eligible for review. At first, projects would be kept on the Cuusoo/Ideas website for up to two years and then taken down if the project did not reach the 10,000 required votes of support. Lego Ideas later changed the threshold to include a minimum number of 1,000 votes in the first year after submission or the project would expire, followed by six months to reach 5,000 and then another six months to reach the 10,000 supported votes. Originally, project submissions were allowed to be about anything and had no limits on the size and style of project.

After sets began to be rejected with stated reasons, Lego Ideas announced restrictions on content including the use of no new part molds, banning intellectual properties owned by competing toy companies, and adult content. Lego Ideas further restricted project submissions in June 2016 by limiting the size of the project, any project replicating a life-size weapon, and any project based on an intellectual property already produced as a set by Lego Ideas/Cuusoo. All eligible projects are collectively reviewed in the order of whichever projects hit 10,000 supporters within any of the three tri-annual deadlines of May, September, or January. Due to the increasing number of project submissions based on ideas that the Lego Company would reject, Lego Ideas has refined its submission standards over the years. Since its inception, a number of sets that have reached the 10,000 vote threshold have been rejected during the review for various reasons. Some rejected sets have been based on specific intellectual properties were rejected due to the content matter presented.

Anything which contains alcohol, sex, drugs, religious references, post-World War II warfare or based on a first-person shooter is deemed inappropriate for younger Lego fans.[1] IPs that have been rejected for this reason have been based on Firefly[4] and Shaun of the Dead. Other projects which have been rejected include ones based on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic due to the property being owned by rival toy manufacturer Hasbro,[6] certain sets based on The Legend of Zelda due to the need to create too many original molds, although Lego did not completely rule out other projects based on the franchise,[7] and a Sandcrawler set for the Ultimate Collector Series due to The Lego Group's ongoing collaboration with Lucasfilm on Lego In the first 2015 review, announced in October 2015, no projects were selected for the first time[9] as the many projects were rejected for various reasons. Many of these projects would not have met the revised submission standards issued in June 2016.