posted 10-30-2025 11:36 AM               

This momentous acheivement demanded its own patch.

Sadly the design became too detailed to be viable for embroidery so making it into a T-Shirt became the next best alternative.

Some "Easter eggs" to pay attention to:

• The flags bordering the patch illustrate the countries that astronauts who have served or visited the ISS came from. The US and Russia flags are larger and at the bottom as they are the "anchor tenants."

• The 74 stars around the inner border illustrate the number of expedition increments from 2000 to this November. Their colors represent which country the increment commander was from:
  
  1. White stars are for the USA,
     
  2. Red stars are for Russians,
     
  3. Yellow stars are for the European Space Agency,
     
  4. Maple leaf is for Chris Hadfield from Canada
     
  5. Red circles represent JAXA astronauts from Japan.
  
  
• The space shuttle program is represented by the Discovery "rendezvous pitch maneuver" during STS-114 in 2005 and the final departure of Atlantis in 2011 during STS-135.

• The inner two tone gray border is illustrated as puzzle pieces in tribute to the engineers who designed and built the ISS modules and the crews that assembled them on orbit.

• The "swoosh" that connects the ISS to the Moon and Mars symbolizes the work being done aboard the ISS will help make those explorations successful.

• The 15 stars not only represent the nations involved in the ISS program but every increment patch that Jorge and I helped design.

• In the "25" are my initials "TANG" and those of my co-artist Jorge Cartes R (JCR).