Stephen Pakbaz‘s MSL Curiosity Rover project on LEGO CUUSOO hit 10,000 supporters 10 months ago, but today LEGO is announcing that Curiosity will become the next new LEGO set through the CUUSOO program.

(This is Stephen’s project photo. I expect the final product may be slightly different. We’ll share the official product photos when we get them.)

Here’s the official announcement:

Results of the Fall 2012 LEGO® Review We’re excited to share the results of the Fall LEGO® Review. In September, three LEGO CUUSOO projects entered the second quarterly review period for projects that successfully reach 10,000 supporters. These three projects — the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover, UCS Sandcrawler™, and Thinking with Portals!™ — have been being considered for production by the LEGO Review Board. 21104 Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover – pending final name confirmation It is with great pleasure we reveal that the next LEGO CUUSOO set will be the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover, based upon the LEGO CUUSOO project by Perijove. This project rose to popularity in late summer 2012, when the real Mars Curiosity Rover approached and landed on the planet Mars in its historic mission. The model designer, LEGO CUUSOO user Perijove is a Mechanical Engineer who worked on the actual Curiosity rover at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Perijove writes that he built and submitted the rover to further the educational outreach of the Mars Curiosity rover’s incredible mission, and to encourage greater public support for space exploration. The final product is still in development. Exact pricing and availability is still being determined, so stay tuned for an update on when you can buy your own Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover in the coming months.

Tim Courtney shares the news in this video:

Personally, I couldn’t be more excited. This is easily my favorite LEGO CUUSOO project from the past 18 months, and is one of the best projects that reflects the spirit of CUUSOO. I know many of you out there will be disappointed that the Star Wars and Portal projects weren’t approved, but I hope you can join me in giving Stephen Pakbaz some well-deserved congratulations!

Update: Caylin and Chris are there at BrickWorld, and Caylin got this shot of the model they used to make the announcement there in Chicago:

It looks essentially identical to the one Stephen used for the project itself, so that’s a good sign, though I also expect that it’s still going through the redesign project with LEGO.