After 60 years of spaceflight patches, here are some of our favorites

As such, there is a rich tradition of space mission patches to draw on, and we thought it would be fun to share some of our favorites over the decades.

Apollo 11

The first human mission to land on the Moon is one of the only NASA mission patches that does not include the names of the crew members, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. This was a deliberate choice by the crew, who wanted the world to understand they were traveling to the Moon for all of humanity.

Another NASA astronaut, Jim Lovell, suggested the bald eagle could be the focus of the patch. Collins traced the eagle from a National Geographic children’s magazine, and an olive branch was added as a symbol of the mission’s peaceful intent.

The result is a clear symbol of the United States leading humanity to another world. It is simple and powerful.

Skylab rescue mission

Skylab was NASA’s first space station, and it was launched into orbit after the final Apollo lunar landing in 1972. From May 1973 to February 1974, three different crews occupied the space station, which had been placed in orbit by a modified Saturn V rocket.

Due to some problems with leaky thrusters on the Apollo spacecraft that carried the second crew to Skylab in 1973, NASA scrambled to put together a ‘rescue’ mission as a contingency. In this rescue scenario, astronauts Vance Brand and Don Lind would have flown to the station and brought Alan Bean, Jack Lousma, and Owen Garriott back inside an Apollo capsule especially configured for five people.

Ultimately, NASA decided that the crew could return to Earth in the faulty Apollo spacecraft, with the use of just half of the vehicle’s thrusters. So Brand and Lind never flew the rescue mission. But we got a pretty awesome patch out of the deal.