Collection Item Summary:

This STS-35 patch belonged to NASA astronaut David Brown, a mission specialist who flew in space for the first time as a member of the crew of STS-107, the Space Shuttle Columbia mission that disintegrated upon reentry on February 1, 2003. Aboard STS-107 as a mission specialist, Brown logged 15 days, 22 hours, and 20 minutes in space. Although this patch was never flown in space, it was a personal memento of Brown's.

STS-35 (originally scheduled to launch May 16) launched December 2, 1990. The mission observed the celestial sphere in ultraviolet and X-ray astronomy through the deployment of ASTRO-1, a four telescope observatory. (Mission numbers reflect the initial schedule, not launch order.) The presence in Dave Brown's possessions of ten sequential mission patches, beginning of with STS-26 and including this STS-35 patch, may indicate that Brown started following the NASA space program more closely in 1988 after the return to flight following the Challenger disaster in 1986. A flight surgeon and a naval aviator, Brown was selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate in April 1996.

Doug Brown, Dave Brown's brother, gave the patch to the Museum in 2006.

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