Astronauts and patch designs

Lower right: their last artwork. Jorge Cartes displays his and Gagnon's patch. Tim Gagnon meets the crew of STS Eric Boe is to his right.

Space News space history and artifacts articles Messages space history discussion forums Sightings worldwide astronaut appearances Resources selected space history documents. Gagnon's and Cartes' early ideas for the STS mission patch.

Feedback: Messages. Space History. Explore some of our favorite patches Click the mission titles to learn more about each patch. Plan your stay A good night's sleep is crucial for a full day of space exploration.

Spacecraft Spotlight: Explorer 1 Read More. Subscribe Sign up to receive our newsletter and digital communications about our programs, exhibits, special discount offers and more! Space in your inbox. They decided to fix it. They saw it as a perfect fit to use the wagon as their symbol of pioneering space. Out of all the goals for this Gemini 5 mission, a big one was to surpass the Soviet Union in how long the astronauts stayed in space.

Vostok was in space 4 days 23 hours and 7 minutes. Gemini 5 had an objective to be in space 8 days. Every space mission has a tradition of having informal dinner before press conferences and start of the mission. They had a small gathering at the house of the first director of NASA. The conversation about the patch quickly spread around the room and Jim Webb, in charge of the NASA budget at that time, who was completely against all personalization of NASA missions.

It almost got to a fight. When everyone cooled down a bit, Gordon Cooper explained that patches are a bit part of mental preparation and are a very important symbol in any military mission.

That would have been a major press backlash. They passed the goal by minutes. A few people who were close to Gordon and Jim say the conversation could not have been this heated.

Most likely Gordon exaggerated a bit when he described these events in his book later on. In any case, this was the start of a long tradition of NASA patches. Every NASA mission has an objective or a goal. When the team gets this assignment, the first thing they do …. Is get in a room and come up with a patch design and a mission name. I just love this! Most mission crews were fully responsible for designing their own patches. Occasionally, a professional graphic designer was involved to help finalize the design.

Its in-house patchcontest now over? Among the latter category of entrants was Jen Scheer, asenior aerospace technician who works for United Space Alliance at the KennedySpace Center, where the shuttles launch and often land in Florida. Scheer, who founded and runs the Space Tweep Society, anonline group for space enthusiasts on Twitter, shared her design through thesocial networking site.

The fourteen stars are to represent each of those who lost theirlives on shuttle missions, with one of the stars having six points like a Starof David, in honor of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon. In response to compliments she received through Twitter, Scheerwrote that she expected some "great designs" that her entry would"have to compete against.