NASA’s famous worm logo will accompany astronauts to the moon as part of the agency’s Artemis program. Vintage design, introduced in 1975, but retired in 1992, was returned to the International Space Station (ISS) earlier this year for SpaceX’s Demo-2 astronaut mission, and now the logo is another historic landmark for the US spaceflight program. Will receive compensation. Photos of the two Artemis Space Launch System (SLS) booster sections donating worm logos were posted on NASA’s Moon Mission website this week.
“Nearly three decades later, our famous logotype is back in action, and it’s thrilling for all of us who work on the original design to come back in such an impressive way,” commented Richard Dane, one of the original logo designers. In a recent NASA article. “Getting involved in the Artemis program is especially exciting, with a promising start with this promising first mission.”
NASA’s worm logo was recently applied to the Orion capsule, along with the logo for Artemis’ agency partner European Space Agency (ESA). Laser-cut decals were applied to the underside of Orion’s crew module adapter that would connect to a service module providing fuel and propulsion. Both logos will be visible as the capsule thanks to the camera on the spacecraft’s solar array moves toward the moon.
The agency’s other blue logo, called the meatball, was made in 1950 and was seen as a symbol of patriotism during the Cold War against the Soviet Union. It featured the same colors as the American flag, i.e. white letters with a red chevron wing on a blue sphere. NASA’s worm logo, first introduced in 1975, was an exciting alternative to the transition from lunar applications to the space shuttle era. For its simple design, it received the Presidential Award from Ronald Reagan in 1984.
SpaceX brought the famous worm logo out of retirement for its historic historic Demo-2 mission that took NASA astronauts to the ISS in late May this year. As the first private spacecraft to successfully launch and land astronauts, the debut now seemed a perfect marker for the transition to a new-age spaceflight, now focused on public-private partnerships, lunar returns and deep deep spaceflight missions to Mars. SpaceX has since unveiled several lunar-centric agreements by NASA, which have made significant contributions to advancing humans towards a more spacefaring future.
A timeless video of Narta’s worm logo being applied to two Artemis booster segments can be seen below:
