Mission patch

A mission patch is a cloth reproduction of a spaceflight mission emblem worn by astronauts and other personnel affiliated with that mission. It is usually executed as an embroidered patch. The term space patch is mostly applied to an emblem designed for a manned space mission. Traditionally, the patch is worn on the space suit that astronauts and cosmonauts wear when launched into space. Mission patches have been adopted by the crew and personnel of many other space ventures, public and private.

The first space patch was flown by Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova on the Vostok-6 mission in 1963; however, that was hidden from public view by the bright orange coverall that was part of the space suit at the time. At the start of the manned ‘space age’, as a rule, astronauts were pilots from a military background. These pilots took the tradition of military shoulder patches with them; most US space missions have had dedicated designs, and since the mid-1980s most Soviet/Russian flights also featured space patches. Mission patches were first sported by NASA astronauts in 1965. The idea was first introduced to NASA by Air Force pilot (and astronaut) Gordon Cooper.

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.)

The Vostok-6 patch was the only one of that program. The first spacewalker, Alexei Leonov wore a general patch that he designed himself on his EVA, which was also used on subsequent flights. As part of the Interkosmos program, the manned flights to the Salyut and Mir space stations between 1978 and 1988 featured mission logos. After that, some international flights had a patch, but only from 1994 onward did every Russian manned launch feature a space patch. At that time, the design and production of the patches was done on the initiative of the crew; the designs were not sanctioned by the Russian space agency (Glavkosmos/RKA/Roscosmos). On a few confusing occasions, that lead to two ‘crew-approved’ patches existing for a single mission. The first agency-approved Russian space patch was the one for Soyuz TMA-13. However, Roscosmos was very late in announcing the design, by which time the crew had already produced their own version; the official design was not worn on the crew’s suits. Since Soyuz TMA-14 in 2009, all launches feature ‘official’ patches.

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