NASA 05 Evolution of a Mission Patch
While in the Arizona desert during testing in 2008, we began to formulate the ideas for how the first rover mission patch would take shape. At the time, the rover was running tractor tires, and someone noticed how the tires made interesting patterns in the gravel, and snapped the above photo. I thought it would be cool to use this pattern as the basis for creating the text for the logo. While the crew was out during the day, I was back at camp in the trailer, sketching and working up the first version of the logo on my laptop.
The first patch for the SPR (Small Pressurized Rover), 2008. This patch had little use of numeric symbols, but we did include 3 stars in the background, to represent the 3 crew members involved in the mission. Very few of these patches were produced, and only members of the original team have them.
The second generation rover patch. By now the rover was called the LER (Lunar Electric Rover), 2009. There were 2 vehicles now, Gen1A and Gen1B. Gen1B had a few changes from the original, including the addition of a second side hatch as well as an aft dust cover for the suits. The patch reflects these changes. In addition, we added 4 stars for our 4 crew members, as well as the Roman numeral XIV to represent the 14 day mission.
2010, and the vehicle is called the SEV (Space Exploration Vehicle). For this patch we really went all out, and had to upscale the physical patch from 4 to 5 inches diameter in order to fit it all in. We went old-school and included all the crewmember names around the outer border. We simplified the text and included 2 red stars to represent the 2 missions, and 7 white stars to represent the 7 days in each mission. We also included the habitat in the field since it was the first year that the architecture team’s habitat mockup made it to the field for testing and interface with the rovers.
In early 2011, I was asked to help the Space Food Systems Laboratory develop an insignia to represent their group. We sat down and I helped them to sketch out their ideas. We wanted to visually represent the use of technology or science to create food for space, so we decided to represent a sort of ‘chemistry set’ out of which a cornucopia of delicious foods would be manifesting itself. I took these ideas into Illustrator and the Food Lab was very happy with the result and has been using the insignia on printed materials and publicity for the group.
The 2011 SEV patch was a departure from the previous patch designs. While the SEV text essentially stayed the same, we made the patch in the shape of the elliptical profile of the new Gen2 SEV and added the Gen2 window profiles. The patch is black, since the Gen2 vehicle was still mostly in the development stages. The French “Découverte Hors Frontières” translates to “Discovery Without Boundaries.” There are 10 stars, 5 on each side (6 white and 4 red), depicting all the NASA centers. The four red stars depict the four test conditions that will be tested during the field trail this year. The three stars in the right upper window panel depicts the three days the crews will be living in the Habitat Demonstration Unit. The larger gold star, of the three stars, is to honor one of the founders of DRATS, Joe Kosmo, who is celebrating 50 years of service to the space program.
