Space Shuttle Orbiters On Display Retirement Patch

Discovery, Enterprise and Endeavour each reached their museums the same way, hoisted off the back of a Boeing 747 by a pair of cranes so the jet could back out from underneath. The airports at Washington Dulles, New York's JFK and Los Angeles had no mate-demate tower, so NASA brought in cranes and a lifting sling to do the job. That lift is the scene at the bottom of this patch. NASA announced the four orbiter homes on April 12, 2011, after more than twenty organizations had asked for one. Atlantis closed out the shuttle program with its landing on July 21, 2011, and then the orbiters went on display.

Discovery went first. Shuttle Carrier Aircraft N905NA landed her at Dulles on April 17, 2012, the cranes raised her clear the next day, and she took Enterprise's place at the Smithsonian's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. Enterprise, the test orbiter that never went to space, landed at JFK on April 27, came off the jet in May, and went up the Hudson by barge to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in June. Endeavour landed at LAX on September 21, 2012, came off the jet on September 22, and rolled through Inglewood and Los Angeles to the California Science Center in October. Atlantis never left Florida and went on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

The patch is a tall triangle, about 4.25 by 5 inches, with a gold merrowed border and a white inner line around a royal blue field. An orbiter seen from above points straight up toward the apex, with gray panel lines, a small red and blue emblem on the left wing and the U.S. flag on the right. A pale blue beam opens from its tail down to the base of the patch. Inside the beam, a black silhouette of the 747 with an orbiter on its back sits between two yellow cranes whose booms meet in a hook overhead, the demate lift seen head-on. ORBITERS ON DISPLAY runs across a light blue band at the bottom in white capitals, and the patch has an iron-on backing.

The shuttle program ran from Columbia's first launch in April 1981 to Atlantis's landing in July 2011. Two orbiters and fourteen astronauts were lost, Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003,. Discovery came home with 39 missions, more than any other orbiter. Endeavour was built to replace Challenger, and Enterprise proved the orbiter could glide and land in the 1977 approach and landing tests. The crowds at Dulles, along the Hudson and on the streets of Los Angeles showed how much those ships meant to people.

It fits a shadow box with a few shuttle mission patches, or a jacket worn on a visit to Udvar-Hazy, the Intrepid, the California Science Center or the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. It is also a good gift for anyone who worked the shuttle program or watched an orbiter come off the 747 in 2012. The orbiters stopped flying in 2011, and this patch is for where they went next.