NASA’s logo from the ’50s to today have switched multiple times. First it was the meatball, then the worm, then back to the meatball, and now it’s both the meatball and the worm. The return of the worm comes as more countries and companies revive a space craze.
“It’s become a cult thing with a huge following,” Richard Danne, the man who designed the worm logo in the ’70s, said. “We had a lot of wonderful products, you know, rockets and space shuttles and the Hubble telescope. It’s sexy and exciting for people in that time. It was, but it’s still today. Aren’t people excited about manned space flight? Lunar missions coming up? I mean, it’s just revved up again.”
The meatball is NASA’s classic round multicolored logo with stars and a swoosh around the acronym. The worm is a smooth typeface in a warm red — different logos for different eras of space travel. The worm went out of fashion with the agency in the ’90s, replaced by the chunkier meatball.
But in 2017, the worm started cropping up on officially sanctioned T-shirts and merchandise. By 2022, the worm was emblazoned across the Artemis 1 rocket. The logo has only increased in use over the years since, with the worm appearing on souvenirs, uniforms and signs.
In 2023 a large statue of the worm appeared in front of the new Earth Information Center. This coincided with NASA bestowing the Exceptional Public Achievement medal upon Danne — the worm’s creator.
“It’s really wonderful for NASA,” Bert Ulrich, the multimedia liaison for NASA, said. “Because we’re able to express our message of going back to the moon in really fun, interesting ways and they incorporate the elegance of the worm or the more wow factor of the meatball in really, really wonderful ways.”
A change in look isn’t the only shift happening in recent years. A space craze comeback has also taken over the world, calling for a return to the classics as NASA plans its return to the Moon.
“It’s more popular today in the world than it was back then,” Danne said. “And that’s hard to explain, I think, but it’s just what it is. So there’s something at the core of the whole thing and the fact that it was serious but inspirational in a way. It’s hard to do with very simple things but that’s the way I’ve lived my life and career with simplicity so it works.”
