During some typically random surfing I read that Italian fashion designer Emilio Pucci created the Apollo 15 mission patch. This was trivia too interesting to not verify. Along the way I found a site dedicated to the long defunct Braniff Airlines (Pucci designed their uniforms in the 1960s and 70s). There’s a rather jumpy telling of the airline’s final hours as it headed into bankruptcy. But back to Pucci, the story of the Apollo 15 patch can be found on this informative Space Mission Patches site where a quote from Al Worden reveals that Pucci designed an initial version of the patch, with his usual stylish colors, which was then reworked a bit to result in the final red, white, and blue emblem.

That led me to check on the upcoming Space Shuttle mission patch. The best insignia descriptions can be found on a site that sells them. There, I discovered that patches created subsequent to the Challenger disaster often featured 7 stars or 7 rays of sun to commemorate the lost crew members. The emblem for the next scheduled mission does the same for the crew of Columbia.