NASA brings back its iconic “worm” logo to mark return of human spaceflight

NASA brings back its iconic “worm” logo to mark return of human spaceflight


NASA originally planned to announce that it was bringing its iconic "worm" logo back on Wednesday, but the agency was afraid people would take it as an April Fools' Day joke.
Happily, it most certainly is not. The worm has returned, and that's no joke.
The space agency said the retro-looking logo will be stamped on the side of the Falcon 9 rocket that will carry astronauts to the International Space Station as part of SpaceX's Demo-2 flight, presently scheduled for mid to late May. NASA says there’s a good chance you’ll see the logo featured in other missions, too.
The change was driven by the space agency's administrator, Jim Bridenstine, who told Ars he is a "huge fan" of the worm symbol.
"I thought marking the achievement of returning human spaceflight to American soil by bringing back the worm would be a fitting tribute to a historic achievement," he said. "I’m very appreciative of the partnership with SpaceX and their willingness to work overtime to make this happen."
NASA has only ever had two logos. There is the original "meatball," which was designed by an employee named James Modarelli in the space agency's second year, 1959. The iconic logo's round shape represents a planet, the stars represent space, the red v-shaped wing represents aeronautics, and circular orbit around NASA represents space travel.
In 1976, as the agency sought to move beyond Apollo into the "modern" era with its nascent space shuttle, it created a new logo with NASA spelled out in a unique type style. With this update, NASA sought to express a "feeling of unity, technological precision, thrust and orientation toward the future." However, this "worm" logo was nevertheless retired in 1992, as NASA reverted to the meatball under the leadership of then-administrator Dan Goldin.
Now, apparently, the space agency will use both logos going forward. NASA will continue to employ the meatball as its primary symbol, but the agency says it is assessing how and where the worm will be used.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

You may soon be able to ride to the edge of space from Alaska in a Balloon

Image
You may soon be able to ride to the edge of space from Alaska in a Balloon Florida-based startup firm Space Perspective plans to use the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak to serve as one of the launch sites for the vehicle, called the Spaceship Neptune A company wants to use an advanced balloon to fly customers from Earth’s surface in Alaska to the highest reaches of the planet’s atmosphere. Florida-based startup firm Space Perspective plans to use the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak to serve as one of the launch sites for the vehicle, called the Spaceship Neptune,  The Anchorage Daily News  reported on Sunday. The balloon rides will be manned by a flight crew taking eight passengers in a pressurized capsule suspended beneath a hydrogen balloon the size of a football stadium. Each passenger could pay an estimated $125,000 for a six-hour journey. Mark Lester, CEO of Alaska Aerospace Corp., said the high-altitude rides will be available from Kodiak in a few years and will ...
Read more

Committee recommends review of planetary protection policies

Image
Committee recommends review of planetary protection policies WASHINGTON — The NASA Advisory Council has recommended that NASA review its existing planetary protection guidelines to balance the needs of science and exploration, an effort that could set the stage for a similar revision at the international level. The council, during a two-day meeting at NASA Headquarters Dec. 10–11, adopted a recommendation calling on NASA to establish an interdisciplinary committee of experts to review the agency’s current requirements for preventing contamination of other worlds by NASA spacecraft as well as any contamination of the Earth by materials brought back from those worlds. “NASA should establish a multidisciplinary task force of experts from industry, the scientific community, and relevant government agencies, to develop U.S. policies that properly balance the legitimate need to protect against the harmful contamination of the Earth or other celestial bodies with the scientific, social, and e...
Read more

Surprise! There's more water on Jupiter than anyone thought

Surprise! There's more water on Jupiter than anyone thought Jupiter  appears to have more water than anyone expected. Newly released data from  NASA's Juno probe shows that water may make up about 0.25% of the molecules in the atmosphere over Jupiter's equator. While that doesn't sound like much, the calculation is based on a prevalence of water's components, hydrogen and oxygen, three times more than at the sun. The new measurements Juno obtained are much higher than a previous mission suggested. The surprise result has scientists delving deep again into results from  NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter , which obtained drier results in 1995 when engineers deliberately threw the spacecraft into Jupiter's atmosphere. (Galileo was low on fuel and NASA didn't want to take the chance, even if it was a slight one, of the spacecraft accidentally crashing on a potentially habitable icy moon.) Reconciling the results from Galileo and Juno is key for sc...
Read more