Explore Worlds
Find Life
Defend Earth
Hands-on activity: Make your own mission patch
The mission
Make your own mission patch like astronauts do! Design it for a real-life space mission or for a trip of your imagination.
Age range: 4-8
What you’ll need:
- Paper
- Colored pencils, crayons, or markers
- Scissors
- Eraser
- Tape
- Space stickers (optional)
NGSS compatibility (for U.S. teachers):
Disciplinary Core Ideas: K-ESS3-1, K-2-ETS1-1.
Science & Engineering Practices: developing and using models; asking questions and defining problems; communicating information.
Crosscutting Concepts: patterns; systems and system models; structure and function.
Background
When NASA astronauts are assigned to a mission, one of the first things they do is start making a mission patch. It’s an opportunity for the new team to get together, bond, and decide on their vision for the culture they’ll be building in space. By drawing their own mission patches, kids can get a hands-on sense of what goes into a space mission and all the different ways we explore the Universe. They can choose a real mission, learn all about it, design their own patch, and then compare it to the “official” version — or, they can imagine their own space mission to anywhere in the galaxy and bring it to life. Spacesuit not included.
1
Mission patches come in all shapes and sizes. Yours can be any you want.
- This way, you have a border to draw inside.
Need inspiration?
NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) each have lots of mission patches to check out.
2
Most patches show the spacecraft that’s doing the mission, but not all do. Some patches don’t even look like they have to do with space at all, like this one of a wagon.
- First, you should decide if your mission is real or pretend.
- Does your mission have just one spacecraft? Or several working together?
3
Where is your mission going? To the Moon? Around Earth? Past Jupiter? There are lots of places to explore.
- How you draw your destination might depend on what your mission will do there. Is it landing, staying in orbit, or just flying past?
- Missions to other worlds tend to have patches that show those worlds, but not all do.
4
Crewed space missions always include the last names of all the astronauts in the patch somewhere, like around the border.
- If your mission isn’t crewed, your patch can just show the name of the mission. You could also add the names of any robots onboard, like rovers.
Kids’ patches in space
Many kids have drawn mission patches that have actually been flown to the International Space Station (ISS). NASA’s Student Spaceflight Experiments Program, which partners with schools around the United States, lets students whose patches win a competition get flown on real space missions to low-Earth orbit. Hundreds of these patches have gone to space.
5
Is your mission building something in space? Is it looking for anything, like alien life? Is it bringing anything back to Earth, like pieces of another world?
6
What space agency (or agencies) are flying your mission? NASA usually doesn’t put its name on its mission patches, but ESA usually does.
- There are many space agencies all around the world.
7
Remember, not everything on the patch has to clearly relate to your mission. Some things go on patches just because they look cool.
8
Using your scissors, carefully cut out your patch.
10
Stick on your patch using a few pieces of tape.
- Now that you know everything that goes into a mission patch, you can make as many as you want. Then, all you need is a spacesuit to stick them on!
- If this activity has got you thinking about all the places space missions might go, check out our sidewalk chalk activity that puts the true scale of the Solar System under your feet.