A new video has surfaced showing NASA’s iconic ‘worm’ logo being sprayed onto the side of a rocket in preparation for the Artemis 2 mission, marking the first human moon mission in over 50 years. The logo, first introduced nearly 50 years ago, is making a comeback as engineers recently applied it to two solid rocket boosters for Artemis 2.
The process, captured in a video released by the agency, depicts technicians meticulously coloring in the lines of the curvy ‘NASA’ lettering, rapidly filling up with red. Each letter of the worm stands at nearly 7 feet (2 meters) high, with the logo spanning roughly 25 feet (7.5 m) from end to end, as per a recent NASA statement.
The two boosters are set to support the Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket, which will carry four astronauts around the moon, with a targeted launch no earlier than September 2025. The crew for Artemis 2 includes NASA commander Reid Wiseman, NASA pilot Victor Glover, who will become the first Black person to leave low Earth orbit (LEO), NASA mission specialist Christina Koch, the first woman to go beyond LEO, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, the first non-American to embark on this mission.
While the launch dates for Artemis 2 and the subsequent moon-landing effort Artemis 3 faced delays in January due to technical reasons, development and training for the missions continue. Artemis 3 is expected to touch down on the lunar surface no earlier than 2026, subject to the readiness of spacesuits and SpaceX’s Starship lander.
The revival of the worm logo, first utilized in 1975, for limited use in 2020 by NASA, has sparked interest. The agency generally employs its ‘meatball’ logo, a 1959 image brought out of retirement in 1992 to evoke the ‘glory days’ of Apollo. The worm logo can also be spotted on the Artemis 2 Orion spacecraft that will house the four astronauts during their moon mission.
The recent video release and the application of the iconic logo mark significant progress in the preparations for the upcoming Artemis missions, signifying NASA’s commitment to returning humans to the moon and paving the way for future space exploration endeavors.
