NASA insignia

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) logo has three main official designs, although the one with stylized red curved text (the "worm") has been retired from official use since 1992. The three logos include the NASA insignia (also known as the "meatball"), the NASA logotype (also known as the "worm"), and the NASA seal.

The NASA seal was approved by President Eisenhower in 1959, and slightly modified by John F. Kennedy in 1961.

The NASA logo dates from 1959, when the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) metamorphosed into an agency that would advance both astronautics and aeronautics — the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

In the NASA insignia design, the sphere represents a planet, the stars represent space, the red chevron, in the alternate shape of the constellation Andromeda, is a wing representing aeronautics (the latest design in hypersonic wings at the time the logo was developed), and then there is the orbiting spacecraft going around the wing. It is known officially as the insignia.

After a NASA Lewis Research Center illustrator's design was chosen for the new agency's official seal, the executive secretary of NASA asked James Modarelli, the head of Reports Division at Lewis Research Center, to design a logo that could be used for less formal purposes. Modarelli simplified the seal, leaving only the white stars and orbital path on a round field of blue with a red vector. Then he added white N-A-S-A lettering.

In 1974, as part of the Federal Graphics Improvement Program of the National Endowment for the Arts, NASA hired Richard Danne and Bruce Blackburn to design a more modern logo. In 1975, the agency switched to the modernist NASA logotype, nicknamed "the worm", a red, stylized rendering of the letters N-A-S-A. The A's horizontal bar is removed in the worm logo. The NASA logotype was retired from official use in 1992.

The design is used only for special occasions and commercial merchandising purposes approved by the Visual Identity Coordinator at NASA Headquarters.

As of 2013, this logo, altered by the use of blue lettering instead of red, is still in use by the NASA Federal Credit Union.

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