Out of this world art needed for iconic space hub’s new mission patch

Artists with a love of astronomy are being given the opportunity to play a key role in designing a mission patch to celebrate the work of Space Park Leicester.

The University of Leicester’s £100 million science and innovation park is calling on space lovers of all ages to produce designs which will be the inspiration for its first official mission patch.

Traditionally, mission patches are a cloth reproduction of a spaceflight mission emblem worn by astronauts and other people connected with space missions. 

Space Park Leicester Education and Outreach Officer Josh Barker said: “Space missions are known for their eye-catching mission patches.

“To support Space Park Leicester’s mission we’re inviting children, young people or adults with a love of space to help us design our new mission patch.

“The winners will receive stickers of their mission patch and we will share their designs with our official artist who will use them as the inspiration for our finalised mission patch.

“The designs could reflect some of the things that we’re known for at Space Park Leicester such as our inspirational world-leading research or impactful education and training.”

Leicester has been a hub for space innovation for more than 60 years and over the decades has attracted hundreds of researchers and scientists who have been involved in more than 90 missions.

Space Park Leicester was officially opened by British astronaut Tim Peake in March 2022 as a unique single-site science and innovation park for space-related companies and researchers.

Competition entrants may want to take inspiration from some of the big space projects Space Park Leicester has been involved in, including:

• BepiColombo mission which is on its way to investigate Mercury
• Exomars which will explore the surface of Mars
• The James Webb Space Telescope which has observed the universe’s earliest galaxies
• SMILE which is studying the Earth’s magnetic field
• SVOM which will use x-rays to look deep into space to study the universe’s most powerful explosions.

Submissions should include a circular design and be accompanied by a few sentences explaining why each element has been used in the image.

Download the Mission Patch Design Challenge template on the Space Park Leicester website.

Designs should be submitted by email to Outreach@Space-Park.co.uk or shared on X, formerly known as Twitter, with @SpaceParkLeic and #SpacePatchLeicester by Friday 19 July.