The commander of NASA's final space shuttle mission,
STS-135, is taking with him to the International Space Station (ISS) two mission patches designed by Drexel University students.
[b]Jen Choy's [i]Spaceswan[/i].[/b] Credit: Drexel University/Jen Choy
"Back when we were trying to come up with [an STS-135 crew] patch design, we threw a few ideas out there and went to a couple of different places who we know had done work in the past," space shuttle Atlantis' commander Chris Ferguson told collectSPACE.com. "I thought I would throw it out to the art school at Drexel University to see if anyone could come up with anything."
"They came up with some really nice designs that I liked. I think in the big scheme of things, it lost out to
the one that we eventually selected but I liked them so much. I did want to recognize the folks who had put the time and the effort into it."
"I think it means a lot to Drexel to take them with me, so I am taking both of those patches," said Ferguson.
The two selected patches, [i]Spaceswan[/i] and [i]Waves,[/i] were designed by Jen Choy and Jeremy Bloom respectively.
"I began the process by looking at past designs for the NASA Patches, most of which were non abstract and straight forward," Bloom e-mailed collectSPACE.
[b]Jeremy Bloom's [i]Waves[/i].[/b] Credit: Drexel University/Jeremy Bloom
"I started playing with different shapes associated with the shuttle and its actions."
"The tunneling appearance of the wave came out of [the] videos I watched about flight. The way the air collapses behind jet engines was inspiration for the wave abstraction."
"From there it was a matter of trying different sizes and colors of the shapes to reach the final design," said Bloom.