posted 12-25-2025 04:15 PM               

Here is its longer history from its artist, David Russell, who posted about his work in June on Facebook.

I had the opportunity to design 14 space shuttle crew patches from 1987 through 2009. This patch, STS-101, went through several steps and changes before it became the final stitched patch.

Several designs were presented to the crew of the STS-101 mission.

In this design, I tried to show the numbers 101 as the two solar arrays of the space station and the Earth in the middle.

The actual stitched patch, just before the the crew changes were made. See the "bat" in front of the nose of the shuttle?

This final version as it appeared in a book featuring all the space shuttle mission patches entitled "Space Mission Art." There was a crew change (two mission specialists) and we had to go back and make that final change.