NASA’s New Logo Has Star Trek Designer
NASA has officially unveiled the logo for its next generation exploration vehicle, Orion. Perhaps the most interesting part of the unveiling: It was designed by Michael Okuda, best known for his work designing the alien languages and computer displays on the Star Trek Enterprise.
Though it won’t likely receive any design awards, the mark was created thoughtfully, and visually, the message comes across easily enough.
collectSPACE summarized Orion Project Manager Skip Hatfield’s remarks on the symbolism of the logo. Here are the basics:
• “O” represents earth
• 3 Stars in foreground represent Orion’s Belt
• Red vector represents the explorer’s path to outer destinations
• 10 stars in background represent the 10 NASA centers working on the project (which one is Houston?)
You can see the animated version of the logo here (QT, 2.3mb).
Orion is the next generation manned space vehicle and the planned replacement for NASA’s outdated Space Shuttle fleet. More information on the Orion project is available here and here.