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The crew
Designing process
All designs copyright Roscosmos/Spacepatches.nl.
The backup patch. Produced in Russia by Tsenki.
The crew of Soyuz TMA-04M: Joe Acaba, Gennadi Padalka and Sergei Revin.
Luc's first design from September 2010, partly based on a Russian stamp honoring Johann von Kruzenstern and still bearing the (misspelled) name of Valkov. The ideas to cut out parts of the patch, was ultimately dropped. Details were filled in using a picture of a model of Kruzenstern's ship Nadezhdah.
In September 2010, Luc had his first sketch ready for TMA-04M. Being a flight commanded by Gennadi Padalka, it was only logical that Luc would take up this job: he had already drawn Padalka's Mir Expedition-26 and Soyuz TMA-4 patches.
Luc: ,,I wanted to use a real theme this time, and ships had worked very well in past space patches. I chose a ship with the name Nadezhdah, which was the first Russian ship to circumnavigate the globe. I added a compass and a Soyuz to emphasize the theme ‘from nautical navigation to space navigation’. My original intention was to do something new and cut out some parts of the patch.’’
The design survived almost unchanged, although some small corrections and additions were necessary. One of the first problems that surfaced in December 2010, was the name of Acaba, because together with two Russian names, it would not stand out as being non-Cyrillic (it would spell ‘Asava’). To solve this, flags were added, to show that this was an American name.
The idea to cut out some parts of the patch, was dropped in January 2011, out of fear that space suit manufacturer Zvezda would not accept it. It would, for instance, have caused all sorts of trouble with the Velcro versions. On February 2, 2011, Padalka informed the design team that his entire crew approved the design. On April 15, 2011, it was learned that the crew would include Revin instead of Valkov, forcing a final change.
The Soyuz TMA-04M design was approved by new Roscosmos head Vladimir Popovkin on July 7, 2011. The first embroidered prototypes were ready in October 21, 2011. Luc: ,,We had two different versions made. One with yellow thread; one with shiny golden metallic thread. We all immediately agreed that it had to be yellow.’’
Back up patch
In action
Other versions
Links
Soyuz TMA-04M at Wikipedia
Soyuz TMA-04M at Spacefacts
Soyuz TMA-04M on CollectSpace
Expedition-31 images at NASA
Expedition-31 images at Energia
Larger images at our Flickr pages.