GoKawiilNASA has assigned its first crew to launch on a mission “13” since Apollo 13 “had a problem” on the way to the Moon 56 years ago.
Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney with NASA, Joshua Kutryk with the Canadian Space Agency, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov will lift off for the International Space Station as Crew-13 on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft in mid-September. The four will serve as members of the station’s Expedition 75 and 76 crews, before returning to Earth about five months later.
“This flight is the 13th crew rotation with SpaceX,” NASA’s announcement read. “The crew will conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations to help prepare humans for future exploration missions to the moon and Mars, and benefit people on Earth.”
Rather than give in to triskaidekaphobia (the fear or avoidance of 13), the crew is embracing it, or at least their connection to the last US launch to be similarly numbered. The Crew-13 mission patch includes visual nods to the insignia worn by Apollo 13 astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert in April 1970.
Credit: NASA/CSA/Roscosmos NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 members Jessica Watkins, Luke Delaney, Joshua Kutryk and Sergey Teteryatnikov. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 members Jessica Watkins, Luke Delaney, Joshua Kutryk and Sergey Teteryatnikov. Credit: NASA/CSA/Roscosmos
Imitation is an option
“NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 patch looks ardently toward the future of space exploration while honoring the legacy of those who came before,” reads the official description of the emblem.
At the center of the Crew-13 patch is a golden dragon, which is both a reference to the name of SpaceX’s capsule and the golden horses depicted on the Apollo 13 insignia. (Lovell and his crewmates worked with NASA contract artist Norman Tiller and muralist and sculptor Lumen Winter, who proposed the equestrian design, to create their flight badge.)
The dragon’s tail on the Crew-13 patch wraps around Earth in a manner reminiscent of the blue contrail that connects Earth with the horses on the Apollo 13 insignia. In the 1970 artwork, it was a nod to the Roman and Greek god Apollo; today, it is a “bridge between Earth, the International Space Station, the moon and Mars,” per NASA’s caption.
The use of Roman numerals for “XIII” (13) and the lack of crew names on the Crew-13 patch also mimic elements of the design from almost six decades ago, wherein the golden stars are symbolic of the Crew-13 families, and the overall capsule shape (as opposed to a circle) references the “possibilities born out of human collaboration toward a common goal,” according to the space agency.