Canceled and Contingency Missions

The US space program has seen many missions canceled due to budget limitations and unforeseen technical problems. The last 3 Apollo Moon missions were canceled as NASA changed its priorities to the Apollo-Soyuz and Skylab programs. During the Space Shuttle program, many missions were canceled as a result of the Challenger and the Columbia disasters. Many early Shuttle missions were canceled due to delays in the development of the spacecraft. Other missions were canceled due to changes in payload and missions requirements. In many cases, mission patches had already been designed before the missions were canceled. After the Columbia accident, NASA developed a contingency program for the shuttle. A second shuttle was kept in a ready condition to be launched on short notice in case the current mission became disabled and was not able to return to Earth. Some of these contingency missions created designs for mission patches, all though none were ever used during a mission into space. Many mission patch designs for canceled missions were lost or remain unpublished. If more of these designs surface in the future, they will be posted here as they become available.