December 3, 2025

— NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, commander of the upcoming Artemis II mission to the moon, recently remarked that flying during the United States' 250th anniversary has definitely got him and his crew "fired up."

Wiseman was referring to the excitement that their flight is adding to the already milestone year, but as it turns out, he could have been speaking literally. As NASA revealed this week, the two side-mounted motors that will provide the majority of the thrust during the Artemis II crew's launch have been adorned with the nation's logo marking the 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

"The America 250 emblem is now on the twin solid rocket boosters of the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket for Artemis II — the powerhouse that will launch a crew of four around the moon next year," read NASA's announcement. "Unveiled on Tuesday, the design echoes the America 250 Commission's Spirit of Innovation theme, honoring a country that has never stopped pushing the horizon forward."

SLS 'America 250' logo painting. Click to enlarge video in new pop-up window. (NASA)

The red, white and blue emblems, which each measure 8 feet high by 11.8 feet wide (2.4 by 3.6 meters), were added inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Workers carefully painted each logo after the SLS had been fully stacked and topped off with "Integrity," the Orion spacecraft that will carry Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen on the mission.

The 10-day Artemis II mission, which is targeted to launch no earlier than Feb. 5 (and no later than April 2026), will mark the first time that humans have returned to the vicinity of the moon since the last Apollo mission in 1972. The flight will not enter orbit around he moon, but rather follow a "free-return" trajectory that will take the crew further out from Earth than ever before.

The America 250 "design's ribbons are intended to evoke a sense of commemoration, celebration and purpose, while the flowing red, white, and blue ribbons form the number 250 as a single continuous path, representing the unity, cooperation and harmony we strive for as a country," according to the semiquincentennial commission.

The logo was created in partnership with Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv, the same firm where Bruce Blackburn designed the nation's bicentennial emblem. Among other places, the 1976 logo was added to the exterior of NASA's VAB, where it remained in place for 22 years.

Blackburn also collaborated with Richard Danne to create NASA's logotype, affectionally called the "worm," which was first introduced in 1975, retired in 1992 and then resurrected alongside the space agency's original and official insignia ("the meatball") in 2020. Just as it was on the uncrewed Artemis I mission in 2022, the Artemis II solid rocket boosters also feature the worm.

"When I look at 2026, the year ahead, we're going 250,000 miles from planet Earth and just coincidentally, it happens to be the 250th anniversary of the United States of America," said Riseman. "So we'll see if we can play those two numbers together just a few thousand times on this mission."