How to build your very own LEGO Ingenuity mini-figure

Early Monday morning NASA’s Ingenuity took its first flight into the Martian atmosphere. This marks the first powered flight on another planet 118 years after the Wright brothers took their first flight here on Earth. You can celebrate the occasion by building your own Ingenuity out of LEGOs!

This week LEGO shared a design of Ingenuity to celebrate the historic first flight. The design was actually originally made by an avid LEGO builder named Curt Quarquesso from New York City. He designed this figure for a German TV program in celebration of the launch of Mars 2020 last year.

The mini-figure stands roughly 3 inches tall and took Quarquesso about a day to design and build the figure. We asked Quarquesso about what he hoped would come of his design now that LEGO has shared it with the world. “I hope that people build their own, and most importantly improve on it!” he said. “The small scale of builds like these make it increasingly likely that people actually own the parts required to make their own at home.”

LEGO challenged its fans to build their own without instructions and out of their spare parts, similar to what NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory had to do with both Perseverance and Ingenuity. “A lack of parts requires that builders get resourceful, and find new solutions to problems working with only what they have on hand,” Quarquesso said when talking about others building his design.

How to Build Your Own LEGO Ingenuity

For those who want the instructions on how to build the small LEGO figure, Quarquesso graciously shared with us the step-by-step instructions for what he used to build the model. The 6-step instructions are easy to follow and even include a list of needed pieces in case you need to go to the LEGO store for the right pieces.

Future Ingenuity LEGO Projects Could Come

Mini-figures are awesome and push your mind to come up with new ways to use what have, but what if you want something to pair with your LEGO Saturn V, Space Station, or Lunar Lander? Well, there’s a possibility that one could come out.

LEGO Ideas is a place where LEGO builders can come up with their own designs and pitch them to the public. If enough of the public choose to support the idea, it will be reviewed by a panel of LEGO employees for consideration of becoming its own official kit. The majority of ideas don’t make it that far, but with enough support, a 1:3 scaled LEGO Ingenuity could be possible.

Credit: Perijove

The scale model is 729 pieces and has counter rotating blades just like the real thing. The Idea project has just over 900 supporters as of publication. The model has about 200 days to reach 1,000 supporters where it will get an extension of 6 more months to be able to reach the next milestone of 5,000 supporters. If the idea hits that milestone, there’s one more step before it hits the review panel: another 6 months to hit 10,000 supporters.