Logo Watch NASA is celebrating the 65th anniversary of its iconic “meatball” logo, despite spending the better part of 17 years trying to kill the poor thing.
Painters work on the official NASA insignia, nicknamed “Meatballs,” in the Spacecraft Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 29, 2020. Credit: NASA/Kim Shifflett
The official logo of the United States Space Agency – an iconic blue circle with a star, the letters “NASA” depicting an orbiting spacecraft, and a red V representing aeronautics – first appeared in 1959, shortly after the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) became the agency that would land Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon a decade later.
NASA’s emblem is a little different. Its history is The agency pointed out“If the meatball is the everyday face of NASA, then the NASA seal is a dressed-up version of that.” But it’s the meatball that’s most associated with NASA. According to NASA:“After an illustrator’s design at NASA’s Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center was selected as the official mark of the new agency, James Modarelli, head of Lewis’ research reports division, was asked by the NACA secretary general to design a logo that could be used for more informal purposes.”
But it could have been very different. In 1975, NASA made an effort to do away with its iconic meatball, switching to a “worm” logo with just the NASA lettering in red and the bar removed from the “A.” This marked the end of the Apollo era, but was not universally accepted within the space agency.
In 1992, then-NASA Administrator Dan Goldin tried to remove the worm, and meatballs were resurrected, resulting in sites like this one: NASA Watch While authorities tried to eliminate the logo, they devoted pages to reports of worm sightings.
Memorably, the Space Shuttle was adorned with the worm logo before it was replaced by the meatball, and the Hubble Space Telescope still sports it today. Returning in 2020 It was aboard the Falcon 9, which was used to launch crew to the International Space Station (ISS). Being hit from the side of the Crew Module Adapter (CMA) for the Orion spacecraft of the long-delayed Artemis I mission.
NASA’s logo has been the source of much internal pain for the agency over the years: the meatball is iconic but difficult to recreate, and the worm is instantly recognizable and monochromatic but has no connection to what many feel were NASA’s glory days.
In fact, there is a place for both logos, and both are currently displayed inside NASA buildings and on spacecraft. The Meatball turned 65 yesterday. Next year the Worm turns 50. Happy Birthday! ®
