LEGO City 60439 Space Science Lab review

60439 Space Science Lab is a later addition to the excellent LEGO City Space collection, but no less worthy of your attention.

LEGO City's Space collection has stood out across 2024 and into 2025 for its quality and design, and for the number of ways it takes otherwise formulaic ideas and gives them new and interesting play potential. This has been consistent across all the sets in the subtheme in City, the couple that were released under Friends, and even those in the tie-in Technic collection too. 60439 Space Science Lab is a later addition to the line-up, but no less worthy of the same praise and attention.

60439 Space Science Lab

Release: Apr 1, 2024

Retiring: Dec 31, 2025

Price: £34.99 / $34.99 / €39.99

Pieces: 560

Minifigures: 2

Little green aliens: 1

60439 Space Science Lab is a simple concept, offering up a four-walled, dome-covered lab, situated presumably on an alien planet and – judging by the large plant growing inside – designed to allow the study of the unusual signs of life sprouting up. Whilst it’s symmetrical in appearance and appears to be made of four similar-looking sections, the lab is fun and varied to build – each section is different to put together, both externally and for light details that contribute to the story being told inside the lab.

The concept and overall structure for this set is relatively simple, while the piece count doesn’t allow for too much to be included beyond the basics. But 60439 is designed intelligently, with not a single brick wasted, so as to still open up a lot of story and play potential. Inside is an entryway, signs of scientific activity, and living quarters, with the latter actually taking up most of the interior space that isn’t otherwise dominated by the colourful tree growing in the middle.

Indeed, whilst it’s called Space Science Lab, for its size and the relative open-ended nature of what is included in the set, it could be just living quarters, a satellite post for astronauts, or perhaps a repair station for 60428 Space Construction Mech. And that’s because there’s this excellent balance of futuristic, space-based design to the building, with smatterings of recognisable daily life inside. You can absolutely picture any astronauts or green aliens from your existing LEGO City collection inhabiting this space in one way or another, while the centrepiece tree isn’t the hardest object to swap out with something else, should you want to repurpose the lab. And flexibility is one of the set’s strengths.

Whilst 60439 Space Science Lab is one of the later releases in the sub-collection of Space sets, it is a fine addition not only in stylistically adding to the wider story being told around interstellar exploration, but also for offering a very valid component to the broader cross-set modularity between a lot of the sets. 60439 Space Science Lab joins 60434 Space Base and Rocket Launchpad and 60446 Modular Galactic Spaceship in offering mid-to-large-sized bases with doorways that can attach to each other, or to any of the various smaller modules included in the latter two sets as well as in 60433 Modular Space Station and the already-retired(!) 60432 Command Rover and Crane Loader.

This cross-set modularity has been great fun as a way to not only link the sets but extend the play, display and story potential between them as you build out your collection. It even makes the case for picking up more than one copy of particular sets, perhaps none more strongly than for 60439 Space Science Lab, as much as anything for that relative ease with which you could swap out the centrepiece alien tree piece to perhaps something more structural.

In any case, as an addition to an already impressive collection or as a standalone piece opening up a new world of other-world exploration, 60439 Space Science Lab is an excellent LEGO experience in every way, offering a nice build, a hands-on play experience, and a new way to get your imagination going. We love everything about this collection of LEGO City Space sets – it’s a line-up that has set a standard for consistency and quality, will stand the test of time and be looked back upon very fondly in years to come.

Our honest opinion: This LEGO City Space collection will stand the test of time for a number of reasons that can be enjoyed in many of the sets, including 60439 Space Science Lab.

This LEGO set was provided by the LEGO Group for review purposes.

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