![A visible-light image of the Andromeda Galaxy, taken by Torben Hansen.](/media/gs1lplmi/andromeda-galaxy.jpg?anchor=center&rmode=crop&width=320&quality=80)
Apollo 17 Mission Patch
Apollo 17 Mission Patch
Apollo 17 Commander, Eugene Cernan, commissioned well renowned space artist Robert McCall to design the patch for the last Moon landing of the Apollo program. The crew wanted the patch to convey the themes of mankind, country, and future.McCall based his image of Apollo on the Apollo Belvedere sculpture – one of the most well-known classical representations of the Greek god. The seven-foot Roman sculpture is displayed in the Vatican museum. McCall transformed this image of Apollo from white marble to gold, so that it represented the ‘golden age’ of spaceflight.
Behind Apollo, a simple eagle with red stripes symbolises the United States, with the three white stars representing the three astronauts. The eagle’s wing overlaps the Moon to show that it has been visited by mankind already. Apollo and the eagle’s gaze are directed towards Saturn and a spiral galaxy, to suggest that the future of human space exploration lay far beyond the Moon. At the time the crew would have found it hard to imagine that theirs was the last human space journey to venture so far.
Web resources
More information
Object number
2017-20
Location
Artefact Store
Has this object been into space?
No
Dimension - Dimension, Value, Measurement unit
Diameter: 10cm
Depth: 0.2cm
Material
Cotton
Materials & techniques note
Embroidered
Associated event
Apollo 17
Associated Person
Gene Cernan
Harrison Schmitt
Ronald Evans
Object Production Date
Circa 1972
Object Production Organisation
Lion Brothers
Object Production Place
Maryland
Baltimore County
United States
Object Production Person
Robert T. McCall
On Display Status
On display
Copyright and Photos
Photography is shared via the license below.
However, some objects on this website are on loan to the National Space Centre and are being shared through the permission of their owners.
Commercial use of images from this website is not allowed without additional permissions being granted. To request permission to use images for purposes not covered in the license below, please contact [email protected]
Individual objects on loan to the National Space Centre may have additional copyright permissions, so advice should always be sought before use.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.