The most striking part of the patch is the orbiter, shown in the vastness of space, this is because the pilots "wouldn't feel comfortable without a picture of a plane." Bowersox's crew kidded him in the presentation on Wednesday morning that every picture he took from space has a runway somewhere in the frame.
The commander continued to explain that he insisted on the American flags on the top left and right of the patch, recalling his Navy background. The names of the seven crew members who flew on the mission are also included in the border.
In the foreground are the classic regular polyhedrons that were investigated by Plato and Euclid. The Pythagoreans were fascinated by the symmetrical three-dimensional objects whose sides are the same regular polyhedron. The tetrahedron, the cube, the octahedron and the icosahedron were each associated with the natural elements: fire, earth, air and water. These symbols were used by the scientists to represent their experiments in combustion science, crystallography and fluid physics.
Bowersox went on to say that the fluid scientists "felt that the geometrical shapes looked too much like crystals" so they insisted on adding the infinity symbol to further show the importance of their experiments.
The shape of the emblem represents a fifth polyhedron, the dodecahedron, which was used by the Pythagoreans to represent the cosmos.