NASA Goddard Tracking and Data Relay Satellite TDRS Patch

The first Tracking and Data Relay Satellite almost never made it to work: on STS-6 in April 1983, its Inertial Upper Stage tumbled out of control and left it in a lower orbit than planned. The satellite had been loaded with more propellant than its attitude thrusters needed. Over the following months, controllers fired those thrusters at planned intervals and walked it up to geosynchronous orbit, saving a spacecraft worth about $100 million. TDRS was built to replace a worldwide network of ground stations, so spacecraft in low orbit could stay in contact far longer. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center manages the system, and its name runs around the bottom of this patch.

TDRS-A went up on April 4, 1983, from Launch Complex 39A, on the maiden flight of Challenger. The same mission, crewed by Paul Weitz, Karol Bobko, Story Musgrave and Donald Peterson, carried out the first spacewalk of the Space Shuttle program. Seven first-generation satellites, built by TRW, were launched on the shuttle, and the second was lost with Challenger on STS-51-L in January 1986. The system talks to the ground through two redundant terminals at the White Sands Complex near Las Cruces, New Mexico, with another on Guam. Its users have included the International Space Station, aircraft, scientific balloons and the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.

This is a round patch, 4 inches across, with a white merrowed border around a red ring. TRACKING & DATA RELAY SATELLITE arcs across the top in white, and Goddard Space Flight Center runs around the bottom. In the light blue center, a TDRS spreads two gold umbrella dish antennas, with a silver solar panel on a boom that breaks out over the border at the upper left. White lightning bolts run from the satellite to a space shuttle orbiter, a gray cylindrical spacecraft and a ground dish on a green patch of Earth, the whole relay idea in one picture. The NASA logotype sits in white at the left. It has an iron-on backing, and stitching it down as well will keep it in place for good.

Before TDRS, a spacecraft in low orbit could only talk to the ground while it passed over a tracking station. The relay satellites changed that, and contact time went up for crewed and low-orbit missions alike. The program started with a rescue in its first year and a loss in its fourth, and it kept going. The people at Goddard and White Sands who keep the links open rarely get noticed until something goes quiet. This patch is for them.

It fits a shadow box next to a Challenger STS-6 patch or a Goddard Space Flight Center patch. It is also a good gift for someone who worked at Goddard, at White Sands or on the TDRS program itself. One satellite, a handful of lightning bolts, and the link that keeps everyone else talking.