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The crew
Designing process
All designs copyright Roscosmos/Spacepatches.nl.
The backup patch.
The crew of Soyuz TMA-01M
The original sketch by Erik van der Hoorn, the drawing by 12-year-old Alexander Turovsky of Michurinsk, Russia, and a picture made by Tom Wallace from Illinois.
Designed by Erik van der Hoorn, of Sneek, the Netherlands. Partially based on art provided by 12-year-old Alexander Turovsky of Michurinsk, Russia, a photo by Tom Wallace from Illinois and input by commander Kaleri. Produced by Spacepatches.nl / Emblemen.net. Patch was to be revealed by Roscosmos on September 20, 2010, but was already visible in embroidered form on September 8, 2010, when NASA published the Star City crew portrait. Roscosmos formerly released the artwork two days later, along with Soyuz TMA-20.
The Soyuz TMA-01M patch shows the new "digital" spacecraft, made up of binary numbers (0's and 1's) against the deep black of space. The numbers translate into "STMA-01M". The spacecraft is accompanied by a crane. Together, the Soyuz and the bird are forming an 'X' shape, the symbol for test flight, to emphasize that this is the first flight of a new type of Soyuz vehicle. The 'technical' shape of the patch and the orange border also refer to this. Both spacecraft and crane are flying towards an orbital sunrise. The nine rays of the Sun are symbolical for the individual members of the Expedition 25 and 26 crews that Kaleri, Kelly and Skripochka (including themselves) wil be a part of. Three large stars are depicted for the Soyuz crew, with two of the stars near Kelly's name emphasizing the possible joint flight with his identical twin brother Mark (which did not take place). The crew's names are embroidered in red on white, the colors of Energiya. Both Kaleri and Skripochka are members of the Energiya cosmonaut group.
Basic artwork without the crane was drawn and submitted to Roscosmos in February 2009, when the children's competition had not yet been formerly adopted for all Soyuz flights. It was proposed to Kaleri over a year later, in April 2010, after which the crane was added as the children's element. The design was finalized in May 2010 with Kaleri's input. The design was approved by Roscosmos head Anatoly Perminov on June 25, 2010. Patch production started on July 2, 2010.
Back up patch
In action
Links
Soyuz TMA-01M at Wikipedia
Soyuz TMA-01M at Spacefacts
Expedition-25 images at NASA
Larger images at our Flickr pages.