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. As is tradition by now, the patch incorporates an element designed through a children's competition. For this mission, a drawing by Nastya Berezutski, 9 years old, from Kurchatov was used. It shows the trusted Soyuz spacecraft, used as a ferry and escape spacecraft at the ISS. Nastya is to witness the lauch of Soyuz TMA-18 from Baikonur cosmodrome.

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 production process of the TMA-18 patch, we feared the main batch would not be completed in time for application on the Sokol launch and entry suits, which takes plakes some six weeks before launch. To ensure the crew would not fly without their logo, we sent ahead to Russia a slightly different version of the patch. of which we had a small number 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 will be worn on ISS clothing.

All designs copyright Roscosmos/Spacepatches.nl.