Of every claim in the LEGO mythos, this is the one people are surest must be a joke. It isn’t. There are, right now, three LEGO minifigures at Jupiter — the biggest planet in the solar system — and NASA put them there on purpose.
The mission
In August 2011, NASA launched the Juno spacecraft on a five-year journey to Jupiter. Tucked aboard were three special LEGO minifigures, and on July 4, 2016, they arrived — becoming, by a wide margin, the LEGO figures that have traveled farther than any others in history.
This wasn’t a stowaway prank. It was an official collaboration between NASA and the LEGO Group under a program called Bricks in Space — an outreach and education effort designed to get kids interested in science, technology, engineering, and math by literally sending LEGO to another planet.
Who’s aboard
The three figures were chosen to tell the mission’s story:
- Jupiter — the Roman king of the gods, holding a lightning bolt. In myth, Jupiter drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief.
- Juno — Jupiter’s wife, holding a magnifying glass “to signify her search for the truth.” In the myth, Juno could see through the clouds and discover Jupiter’s true nature — a perfect metaphor for a spacecraft peering beneath Jupiter’s cloud tops.
- Galileo Galilei — the astronomer who first turned a telescope on the sky and discovered Jupiter’s four largest moons. His minifigure carries a tiny telescope for the trip.
It’s a genuinely clever piece of storytelling: the mythological couple who inspired the planet’s name, plus the scientist who first truly saw it.
Why they’re not plastic
Standard ABS-plastic minifigures would not survive a launch, years in deep space, and Jupiter’s savage radiation environment. So these three are different: they were specially made from spacecraft-grade aluminum, molded unpainted, and prepared to endure the conditions of the mission. They’re minifigures in shape and spirit — but they’re metal, built to a spacecraft’s standards.
So — true?
Emphatically true. Three aluminum LEGO minifigures — Jupiter, Juno, and Galileo — flew on NASA’s Juno spacecraft and reached Jupiter in 2016. It’s documented by NASA’s own Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the space press, and the LEGO Group. When Juno’s mission eventually ends and the spacecraft is sent to burn up in Jupiter’s atmosphere, those three minifigures will go with it — the most dramatic retirement any LEGO figure will ever have.
What this means for collectors
You can’t own the ones at Jupiter (and LEGO Ideas fan campaigns to make a retail Juno set have come and gone). But the story is a perfect illustration of why minifigures became the beating heart of LEGO collecting: they’re characters, and characters carry stories. A brick is a brick, but a minifigure can be a Roman god on a spacecraft.
If you want to appreciate how far the little figure has traveled — from a faceless 1975 placeholder to Jupiter orbit — go spin the randomizer. None of yours have been to space. All of them share DNA with three that have.
