Are NASA people a bunch of geeks? This article involves Marvel, students and space exploration. The movie “Guardians of the Galaxy” based on Marvel Comics has sent space exploration back to popularity. This is why two of the most beloved characters will be included on the mission logo.

America’s Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) wants Rocket the Racoon and Groot to appear on a patch that’s going to show on future logos on payloads traveling to the lab on the International Space Station.

The exciting news was tweeted at the Comic-Convention in San Diego, by James Gunn.

The new logo was created by Juan Doe, a Marvel celebrity in his own right. He previously did covers for the company. CASIS wants the logo to bring more attention to the ISS and build trust in what people can do in the coming years.

One of the objectives for CASIS is to find novel ways to popularize the activity of the ISS Laboratory and the experiments which are going on in that orbiting spacecraft. Ken Shields, Director of Operations at CASIS jokes that this is a coveted operation to actually send the two mascots into space, get them irradiated and hopefully celebrate their coming back alive.

This year, there will be 100 experiments and scientific research launching into space. Groot and Rocket will be the mascots for these missions.

This is done to get the public’s attention. NASA wants to get the crucial funding they depend on to explore space. Marvel is one of the most successful brands in the world, so it was a natural choice for an out of the box logo.

NASA hopes to inspire new generations of experts in the space field, with logos like these and new ideas. But that’s not all. An educational project is brewing at CASIS, which is supposed to bring kids closer to their dream of becoming explorers, engineers or scientists.

CASIS is a brainchild of NASA. It was created to bring about innovation on board the ISS. Some of the objectives are supposed to make the next step into deep space, while others are linked to Earth applications of inventions made in space, which could be useful to the technological advancement.

Image Source – Wikipedia