NASA, which stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration, was started on October 1, 1958. It is the United States government agency in charge of science and technology that has to do with airplanes and space. It sends satellites that help scientists learn more about Earth and other places in the solar system. It also has programs that send manned spacecraft to the Moon and other planets. It tries to share what they learn with people all over the world so they can make new inventions that will make life better on Earth.
NASA has a lot of fans. Walmart and Target sell T-shirts, swimsuits and sippy cups with the NASA logo. Coach makes bags and shoes emblazoned with it. Even singer Ariana Grande sold clothes with the NASA logo on it at her Coachella concert. But NASA doesn’t make any money from the merchandise that features its name or logo.
Merchandise requests are coming in at a rate that has doubled since a few years ago, said Bert Ulrich, who is a multimedia liaison at NASA and oversees the logo approval process. He says the increase in requests is partly because the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing is this summer.
The official NASA seal has been used since 1959, when it replaced the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) logo. The original design of the NACA logo was a sphere representing space, blue stars and an orbiting spacecraft, with red chevrons and white N-A-S-A lettering on a blue field. NASA’s worm logo, which was introduced in 1975, was inspired by the NACA’s design, but with simplified colors and a more modern look.
