Some great high-end geekery over at The Space Review: a lengthy piece deconstructing the meanings of various US military satellite launch patches. Owls, eyes, dragons, ships and stars adorn these patches, made to commemorate both the launches and the teams who worked on them – but what do they mean?
…the patch depicted four wing-shaped symbols circling the Earth in two different orbits—analogous to the 57 and 68 degree orbits occupied by previous Lacrosse satellites. Of those four symbols, three were white and one was red. Molczan knew that of the four Lacrosse satellites launched to date, the first spacecraft, launched aboard the Space Shuttle in 1988, had been deorbited.
[Another] third patch developed for the launch was the “all-seeing eye” patch mentioned earlier. Although the eye over the pyramid symbol is often attributed to Freemasons, the symbolic eye itself can be traced back to ancient Egypt, and in the United States it was first included on the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States in 1782. Clearly whoever developed the design for the patch took the symbol from the dollar bill and adapted it, intending it to symbolize the same thing as the owl eyes on the other two patches—the ability of the satellite to see regardless of day or night. The logo also contains the launch number B-28 written out in Roman numerals, and letters representing the NRO, the 2nd Space Launch Squadron, and Lockheed Martin Aerospace.
Via The Daily Grail