A mission patch is a cloth badge worn by astronaut

Astronaut

An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....

s and other personnel affiliated with a manned or unmanned space mission. A new patch is created for each mission.

Origins

Mission patches were first sported by NASA

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

 astronauts in 1965. Mission patches are similar in style and purpose to shoulder patch

Shoulder patch

A shoulder sleeve insignia, is an embroidered patch used by major formations of the United States Army. Each formation has a unique formation patch, and the US Army is unique among the US armed services in that all soldiers are required to wear the patch of their headquarters as part of their...

es 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

Gordon Cooper

Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr. , also known as Gordon Cooper, was an American aeronautical engineer, test pilot and NASA astronaut. Cooper was one of the seven original astronauts in Project Mercury, the first manned space effort by the United States...

.

Early manned NASA missions lacked patches; instead, the astronauts gave their spacecraft names. (Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard

Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. was an American naval aviator, test pilot, flag officer, and NASA astronaut who in 1961 became the second person, and the first American, in space. This Mercury flight was designed to enter space, but not to achieve orbit...

's capsule for Mercury 3

Mercury-Redstone 3

Mercury-Redstone 3 was the first manned space mission of the United States. Astronaut Alan Shepard piloted a 15-minute Project Mercury suborbital flight in the Freedom 7 spacecraft on May 5, 1961 to become the first American in space, three weeks after the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had carried...

 was named Freedom 7, for instance.) When Gus Grissom

Gus Grissom

Virgil Ivan Grissom , , better known as Gus Grissom, was one of the original NASA Project Mercury astronauts and a United States Air Force pilot...

 proposed to name his Gemini 3

Gemini 3

Gemini 3 was the first manned mission in NASA's Gemini program, the second American manned space program. On March 23, 1965, the spacecraft, nicknamed The Molly Brown, performed the seventh manned US spaceflight, and the 17th manned spaceflight overall...

 capsule Molly Brown – a reference to The Unsinkable Molly Brown

The Unsinkable Molly Brown (musical)

The Unsinkable Molly Brown is a musical with music and lyrics by Meredith Willson and book by Richard Morris. The plot is a fictionalized account of the life of Margaret Brown, who survived the sinking of the RMS Titanic, and her wealthy miner-husband....

, referring in turn to Grissom's Mercury 4

Mercury-Redstone 4

Mercury-Redstone 4 was the second United States manned space mission, launched on July 21, 1961. The Mercury program suborbital flight used a Redstone rocket. The spacecraft was named Liberty Bell 7 piloted by astronaut Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom. It reached an altitude of more than 118.26 mi ...

 capsule which sank in the ocean shortly after splashdown – NASA officials were nonplussed and they abolished the practice of naming capsules.

This prompted astronaut Gordon Cooper to propose and develop a mission patch for his and Pete Conrad

Pete Conrad

Charles "Pete" Conrad, Jr. was an American naval officer, astronaut and engineer, and the third person to walk on the Moon during the Apollo 12 mission. He set an eight-day space endurance record along with command pilot Gordon Cooper on the Gemini 5 mission, and commanded the Gemini 11 mission...

's Gemini 5

Gemini 5

Gemini 5 was a 1965 manned spaceflight in NASA's Gemini program. It was the third manned Gemini flight, the 11th manned American flight and the 19th spaceflight of all time...

 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

James E. Webb

James Edwin Webb was an American government official who served as the second administrator of NASA from February 14, 1961 to October 7, 1968....

 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.

Evolution

Following the loss of the Apollo 1

Apollo 1

Apollo 1 was scheduled to be the first manned mission of the Apollo manned lunar landing program, with a target launch date of February 21, 1967. A cabin fire during a launch pad test on January 27 at Launch Pad 34 at Cape Canaveral killed all three crew members: Command Pilot Virgil "Gus"...

 crew in a devastating fire, embroidered patches were restricted from crew clothing. Instead, astronauts in flight wore mission patches of fire-resistant Beta cloth

Beta cloth

Beta cloth is a type of fireproof silica fiber cloth used in the manufacture of Apollo/Skylab A7L space suits and in other specialized applications....

 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.

External links

• History of Patches
• "More Than Just a Merit Badge"
• NASA's Brilliant Mission Patches - slideshow by Life magazine