Mission patch

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Apollo 11 mission patch

A mission patch is a cloth badge worn by astronauts and other personnel affiliated with a manned or unmanned space mission. A new patch is created for each mission.

[edit] Origins

Mission patches were first sported by NASA astronauts in 1965. Mission patches are similar in style and purpose to shoulder patches worn by members of military units, and the idea of mission patches was first introduced to NASA by Air Force pilot (and astronaut) Gordon Cooper.

Early manned NASA missions lacked patches; instead, the astronauts gave their spacecraft names. (Alan Shepard's capsule for Mercury 3 was named Freedom 7, for instance.) When Gus Grissom proposed to name his Gemini 3 capsule Molly Brown – a reference to The Unsinkable Molly Brown, referring in turn to Grissom's Mercury 4 capsule which sank in the ocean shortly after splashdown – NASA officials were nonplussed and they abolished the practice of naming capsules.

Gemini 5 mission patch; NASA's first patch

This prompted astronaut Gordon Cooper to propose and develop a mission patch for his and Pete Conrad's Gemini 5 flight: an embroidered cloth patch sporting the names of the two crew members, a covered wagon, and the slogan "8 Days or Bust" which referred to the expected mission duration. NASA administrator James E. Webb approved the design, but insisted on the removal of the slogan from the official version of the patch. The so-called Cooper patch was worn on the right breast of the astronauts' uniforms below their nameplates and opposite the NASA emblems worn on the left.

[edit] Evolution

Following the loss of the Apollo 1 crew in a devastating fire, embroidered patches were restricted from crew clothing. Instead, astronauts in flight wore mission patches of fire-resistant Beta cloth onto which designs were silkscreened. (Embroidered patches were still produced for ground side wear, non-flight personnel, sale to collectors and to be flown in space as souvenirs.)

Since Gemini 5, patches have been created for all NASA manned missions and many unmanned expeditions. Patches are now created by professional graphic designers, but the design is still directed by each astronaut crew. Enthusiasts have since created patches for manned NASA missions which preceded Gemini 5; many purists object to these designs on the grounds that these newly-minted patches weren't created or worn by the astronauts.

Mission patches have been adopted by the crew and personnel of many other space ventures, public and private.