NASA insignia

The NASA seal was created in 1958 by George Neago, a staff industrial artist who worked at the Lockheed Missiles Division in Palo Alto, California.

James Modarelli was the manager of the Lockheed Missiles Division's Reports Department in 1958 and Neago's supervisor.

[8] The insignia removes the outer ring and two inner spheres of the seal, and leaves the white stars, orbital path, and red vector on a field of blue with the letters "NASA".

This insignia received the nickname of the "meatball" in 1975 from Frank Rowsome, head of technical publications at NASA Headquarters, to differentiate it from the new logotype.

[1] In 1974, as part of the Federal Graphics Improvement Program of the National Endowment for the Arts, NASA hired Richard Danne and Bruce Blackburn to design a more modern logo.

[9] In 1975, the agency switched to the modernist NASA logotype, a red, stylized rendering of the letters N-A-S-A.

[8] The worm was used only for commercial merchandising purposes approved by NASA until 2020, when it was also brought out of retirement by Administrator Jim Bridenstine, and unveiled on the booster for SpaceX's Crew-Demo 2 Mission.

Since its reintroduction in 2020, the "worm" logotype has been used only for human spaceflight-related activities,[citation needed] featuring prominently on the SpaceX Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station and on the Solid Rocket Boosters of the SLS rocket used for the Artemis I mission.