The crew


The crew of Tracy Caldwell-Dyson, Aleksandr Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornyenko pose for their crew portrait

Designing process

Luc's first sketch (left), an early version of the logo and Nastya Berezutski's art (right)

On December 28, 2009, Roscosmos director Perminov revealed the design of the Soyuz TMA-18 crew patch. By tradition, it incorporated an element designed through a children's competition. For this mission, a drawing by Nastya Berezutski, 9 years old, from Kurchatov was used.

The patch design features three cosmonauts, clad in their Sokol pressure suits, ready for their months long stint on board the International Space Station. Their Soyuz craft flying over the Earth, depicted in the white and blue hues of clouds and oceans, while three stars signify three people orbiting Earth. The patch was composed by Spacepatches designer Luc van den Abeelen.

During the embroidery process of the TMA-18 patch, the production team at Spacepatches.nl encountered a technical problem that was feared to prevent on-time delivery to Moscow for application to the Sokol launch and entry suits. The Sokols have to go through more rigourous testing than the other oboard clothing and need to be completed (including the patches) at an earlier stage. To ensure the crew would not fly without their logo, a slightly different version of the patch was sent ahead to the Zvezda factory. A small number of therse patches had been available before the main batch was ready. This resulted in a slighly larger version of the patch, eventually worn on launch day. The smaller, 'standard' version was worn during training and was worn on ISS clothing.

All designs copyright Roscosmos/Spacepatches.nl.