The Crew
The five member STS-69 crew: Commander Dave Walker, Pilot Ken Cockrell and Mission Specialists Jim Voss, Jim Newman and Mike Gernhardt.
The Artwork
Designed by the crew members, the patch for STS-69 symbolizes the multifaceted nature of the flight's mission. The primary payload, Wake Shield Facility (WSF), is represented in the center by the astronaut emblem against a flat disk. The astronaut emblem also signifies the importance of human beings in space exploration, reflected by the planned space walk supporting Space Station assembly. The two stylized Space Shuttles highlight the ascent and entry phases of the mission. Along with the two spira! plumes, the stylized Space Shuttles symbolize a NASA first - the deployment and recovery on the same mission of two spacecraft (both the Wake Shield Facility and the Spartan). The constellations Canis Major and Canis Minor represent the astronomy objectives of the Spartan and International Extreme Ultraviolet Hitchhiker (IEH) payload. The two constellations also symbolize the talents and dedication of the support personnel who make Space Shuttle missions possible.
Crew Evaluation Version
above: The crew evaluation version of the STS-69 patch.
Astronaut Jim Newman: "The vendor produces a small set of evaluation patches for NASA to ensure that they have got it "right" before the mass production begins. And it occasionally results in some slight modifications to the eval patch. That is what happened for STS-69"...
below: Details of the final version of the patch and the evaluation version.
