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| Crew & Mission |
Left: Viktorenko, Kondakova and Merbold in their trainign Sokols. Right: The crew in their training IVA suits. Note Kondakova's personal Molchanov patch and Merbold's "Russian" Esa-patch.
Mission
| The Flight Sokols |
Merbold, Viktorenko and Kondakova ready for launch.
The Esa patch on Merbold's Sokol suit.
The Esa flag patch on Merbold's Sokol suit
| IVA Wear |
Left: EO-16 crewmember Musabayev with TM-20 cosmonauts Merbold and Kondakova. Right: Merbold was wearing a red-bordered Zvezda-patch on his Penguin suit.
Left: Viktorenko in his underwear pictured with Kondakova in Penguin suit. Right: TM-20 cosmonaut Merbold in underwear, examined by EO-15/16/17 crewmember Polyakov.
| Soyuz TM-20 / EO-17 |
The original sketches, as they appeared in Novosti Kosmonavtiki No. 18 of August 27, 1994. The third patch was the original idea, but it was considered too playful.
Konstantin Lantratov again sketched a launch- and mission patch for this flight. They were both in the shape of a shield, referring to the crew's nickname: Knights. According to Lantratov, the patches were designed with only some input by Elena Kondakova, because Alexander Viktorenko and Ulf Merbold were not available. The patches were presented to the crew during training. Following the succes of TM19, he might have believed the patch would again we worn non the Sokol suits.There are no indications, however, that the patches were actually worn anytime before, during or after the mission. Flying an international mission, the TM-20 crew used the Euromir-94 patch as their official logo.
Left: the original Novosti Kosmonavtiki fax as received by Spaceview Operations. Center: The Spaceview Operations/Aviation Patch Supplies patch. Right: The Stewart Aviation patch (1346).
Luc van den Abeelen and Jaap Terweij from Spaceview Operations in Amsterdam received the designs from Lantratov and had them produced by Aviation Patch Supplies in Soest, the Netherlands. Again, Stewart Aviation copied both patches. The TM-20 patch has some noticable differences (the D in Merbold and Kondakova, color of rocket flame). Looking at the lettering and the cloud-pattern, we believe Stewart did use the original drawing of Lantratov - some changes made by Spaceview Operations, were not picked up by them. Luc van den Abeelen believes Vadim Molchanov might have leaked this design to Stewart. The orange in the exhaust flame was almost probably left out to save on production costs.
The EO-17 patches are almost identical. The three stars are bigger in the Stewart Aviation version and it has a mistake: the Cyrillic "P" and "L" characters in "KomPLeks Mir" at the top of the patch have been swapped, even though the Spaceview version also seems to have two "P" characters - note that the "L" in "Polyakov" is different. Since the Spaceview Operations version differs from the original design, we believe Stewart simply copied this patch and did not have the original drawing.
Left: The original design. Center: The Spaceview Operations patch. Right: The Stewart Aviation version (1344).
| The Orlan EVA-suits |
The EO-17 crew did not perform spacewalks, but had Orlan DMA's 18 (blue stripes) and 25 (red stripes) available.
| Source |
Left: The TM-21 Presentation Patch Set. Right: The Stewart Aviation Euromir-94 patch.
We bought our Euromir-94 patch directly from a dealer in Moscow. We have seen two original Euromir-94 patches for sale so far and a third as part of the official Zvezda Presentation Patch Set. Stewart Aviation in England produced a mass-produced souvenir version (1444). It can be recognized by the twill, almost purple background (original is fully embroidered). Cargo Bay Emblems (formerly known as Eagle One Aerospace) also made a souvenir version.
Stewart also produced a personal patch for Viktorenko (1342), Kondakova (1343), Merbold (1318) and his back up, Pedro Duque (1316). The cosmonauts have never been seen wearing those either.