In less than two years, NASA will send three unique Lego Minifigures to their fiery deaths in Jupiter’s atmosphere.

It will make the only other set in the universe — a prized possession at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory — much more valuable.

But fear not, the two Lego men and one Lego woman will be sacrificed in the name of science. The aluminum figurines of astronomer Galileo, Roman god Jupiter and goddess Juno are aboard a deep-space probe that’s been heading to the gas giant for the last five years.

The spacecraft, named after Juno, will peer through Jupiter’s cloudy atmosphere in an attempt to understand the origins of the largest planet in our solar system. When the probe completes its mission in 2018, it will fly into Jupiter and burn up.

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Juno’s Principal Investigator Scott Bolton came up with the idea to include the Minifigures aboard the spacecraft to inspire and connect children with the mission. He thought Lego would make the perfect partner because of the toy manufacturer’s commitment to education.

“It was just me making a cold call,” Bolton said.

NASA and Lego have collaborated before. They’ve sent Legos to the International Space Station and to Mars. But the trip to Jupiter will be the furthest a Lego man or woman has ever traveled in our universe.

Lego created two sets of figures specifically for the mission. One was a backup in case the first set broke. While the same size as store-bought Minifigures, these Legos are made out of aluminum to protect them from the harshness of space. “They had to be made of the same material the spacecraft is made of,” Bolton said.

NASA secured the trio beneath the spacecraft’s thermal protection.

In Roman mythology, Jupiter would use clouds to hide his mischief, but his wife, Juno, would peer through his screen from atop Mount Olympus. Lego Juno holds a magnifying glass, while Jupiter holds a lightning bolt. The third figurine represents Galileo Galilei, the Italian astronomer, who determined that the Earth revolves around the sun, and not the other way around. Galileo, in part, determined this after observing Jupiter’s four moons orbiting the gas giant.

His Lego carries a telescope and a globe.

Bolton said he would love to see the three Minifigures become commercially available. He loans JPL’s backup set to museums and takes them on school tours, he said. Lego also sent a three-foot Lego duplicate of the Juno spacecraft to Bolton and JPL.

On July 4, when Juno fires its engines to enter Jupiter’s orbit, the three backup Legonauts will be in NASA JPL’s mission control room to make sure everything goes right.

And maybe they’ll breathe a little sigh of relief too.