Space Shuttle Astronaut Safety Quality Mission Success Patch

After Challenger was lost on January 28, 1986, NASA set up an Office of Safety, Reliability and Quality Assurance that reported straight to the Administrator. It was one of the changes that followed the Rogers Commission recommendations. The shuttle fleet stayed on the ground for about 32 months while the solid rocket booster joint that failed was redesigned. Every shuttle flight after that answered to the same three demands stitched on this patch: astronaut safety, quality and mission success. The patch sets those words around a shuttle stack and a space station, the two machines that defined the program's later years.

The Space Shuttle program flew 135 missions, from STS-1 on April 12, 1981, to the landing of Atlantis at the end of STS-135 on July 21, 2011. Five orbiters reached space: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour. Each launch stack was the winged orbiter, a disposable external fuel tank and two reusable solid rocket boosters. Columbia and her crew of seven were lost on STS-107 on February 1, 2003, and the fleet stood down for about 29 months before STS-114 returned it to flight in 2005. After the accident, NASA planned for the station to serve as a safe haven for a shuttle crew in trouble.

The patch is a round 3.5 inch disc with a rolled royal blue merrowed border around a white twill field. ASTRONAUT SAFETY arcs across the top and MISSION SUCCESS across the bottom in blue block letters. On the right a white shuttle stack stands nose up, the orbiter riding the external tank with a booster on each side, all outlined in black thread. At upper left a space station spreads its long rows of solar arrays in black and white. A NASA insignia, the blue disc with the red vector, sits on each side, and QUALITY slashes across the middle in bold red letters. It has a sew-on backing.

Fourteen astronauts were lost across the two accidents, seven on Challenger and seven on Columbia. The engineers, technicians and inspectors who built, checked and launched the shuttles carried those names through every flow that followed. A torque stripe on a fitting, a signature on a work order, a hold called on the pad: that is how the words on this patch got done. The program ended with Atlantis rolling to a stop at Kennedy Space Center in July 2011 and her crew home safe. Anyone who worked a shuttle flow knows what it took to get there.

It fits a shadow box beside a shuttle launch photo, or the sleeve of a jacket worn to a Kennedy Space Center reunion. It is also a good gift for a retired engineer, inspector or technician who spent a career on the shuttle program. Three words around one shuttle stack, and every crew depended on them.