— A member of NASA's third and final crew to live and work on the United States' first space station has "signed off" on a new embroidered patch that finally gets the numbering of his mission correct.

Ed Gibson was the science pilot on the Skylab 4 crew, but his crewmates' and his mission patch designated their mission as "Skylab 3." The program had numbered the flights to include the launch of the orbital workshop, such that the third crew was on Skylab Launch 4 (SL-4), but confusion among NASA's managers and its apparel providers resulted in the astronauts' patches and patch-adorned clothing using the Skylab 1, 2 and 3 designations.

The new, limited edition Skylab 4 patch was developed in collaboration with Gibson as the latest release in the Space Hipsters Facebook group's "Signature Edition" series.

"The patch has been designed with a deliberately retro look," said Chris Spain, who arranged for the production of the patch. "It incorporates graphics used by NASA at the time of the Skylab project to represent the astronomical observations and space-science experiments that would be undertaken during the missions, along with a distinctive Skylab 4 logotype used on posters and other material at the time of the mission."

The patch also features Gibson's autograph sewn into the design (hence it being part of the Signature Edition). The thread color used for his signature differentiates three versions of the patch:

As with all of the Signature Edition releases, sales of Gibson's patches benefit Taking Up Space, an organization that has created a 36-week science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) curriculum and organizes trips for middle-school-age Native American girls to attend Space Camp at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

The gold patches are available for a donation of $75 each; silver is $50 and the open edition is $15. There is a limit of one gold and two silver patches per person. All of the patches are made by A-B Emblem, which has been supplying patches for NASA since the Apollo moon landings.

There is also a 4-inch (10-cm) vinyl sticker with the open edition design available for $3 as an add-on to patch orders. Further details on ordering patches are on the Space Hipsters Facebook group.

Gibson's patch is the ninth in the Space Hipsters series. The group previously produced emblems celebrating Apollo astronaut Fred Haise (2022) and space shuttle astronauts Hoot Gibson (2022), Mike Mullane (2023), John Herrington (2023), Eileen Collins (2024) and Nicole Stott (2025), as well as "NASA Legends" astronaut nurse Dee O'Hara and flight controller John Aaron (2025).