レゴがハッブル宇宙望遠鏡をミニフィギュアスケールの精密デスクトップモデルとして発売Lego deploys Hubble Space Telescope as detailed desktop model

Lego has announced a detailed desktop model of the Hubble Space Telescope built to minifigure scale, offering space enthusiasts and brick-building collectors a faithful replica of one of the most recognizable orbiting observatories ever launched. The set, reported by Ars Technica, reframes a piece of working spaceflight hardware as a display-ready collectible, and its minifigure scale is the defining design choice that sets it apart from earlier, smaller Lego renditions of the telescope.

Minifigure scale means the model is proportioned so that Lego's standard minifigures would be roughly correct in size relative to the real spacecraft. Because the actual Hubble is roughly the size of a school bus—about 13 meters long and more than four meters in diameter—a model built to that scale is necessarily substantial, and it lets the set convey the sheer bulk of an instrument that most people only ever see in artist renderings or on-orbit photographs. That approach appears aimed at hobbyists who value dimensional accuracy and the ability to stage minifigures alongside the model.

The Hubble Space Telescope itself is an unusually strong candidate for this kind of tribute. Launched in April 1990 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery and jointly operated by NASA and the European Space Agency, Hubble has delivered decades of observations that reshaped astronomy, from measurements refining the expansion rate of the universe to deep-field images revealing thousands of distant galaxies. Its distinctive silhouette—a cylindrical body, twin solar arrays, and a hinged aperture door—makes it instantly identifiable, which helps explain why it translates well into a static display model.

A model at this scale would likely aim to reproduce