Space Shuttle missions were planned years in advance based on complex combinations of orbiter vehicles, crews, payloads and mission objectives. Delays in the readiness of a particular payload or orbiter could have knock-on effects on multiple planned missions and would sometimes lead to a planned mission being cancelled with the crew being reassigned to a different mission or split up to follow reassigned payloads or mission specialities.

A mission insignia was usually only designed once the misson preparation was fairly well advanced, so in many cases mission were cancelled before any insignia had been created.

A cancellation closer to the planned launch date sometimes meant that an insignia had already been designed, with decals or photos of the finalized insignia being printed, but only occasionally was a mission cancelled so close to the launch date that patches based on the insignia had already been produced and distributed by some embroidery companies.

These original embroidered mission patches for cancelled Shuttle flights are quite collectible, with the rarest versions being highly sought-after and valuable.

Note that in general only those cancelled missions for which embroidered patches were actually produced at the time are covered in the sections below. For some other missions people have produced embroidered patches based on the mission insignia but these can only ever be considered fantasy or replica patches.

On September 21, 1983, NASA announced the crew of the STS-41E mission as Commander Karol J. Bobko, Pilot Donald E. Williams, and Mission Specialists M. Rhea Seddon, Jeffrey A. Hoffman, and S. David Griggs.

Two months later the crew were reassigned to the STS-41F Discovery mission, for which the insignia shown on the right was created.

In August 1984, not long before the scheduled launch, the STS-41F mission was cancelled.

The STS-41F crew were kept together and reassigned to the STS-51E mission which was due to launch the TDRS-B satellite from Challenger. Added to the crew roster was French Payload Specialist Patrick Baudry.

The insignia for the new STS-51E mission re-used the STS-41F design, simply changing the name of the spacecraft from Discovery to Challenger and adding a tab at the bottom for Baudry's name.

Unfortunately, the change in the spacecraft name that meant that those manufacturers who had already begun production runs of the STS-41F Discovery patch before that mission was cancelled were left with a stock of unusable STS-41F patches on their hands.

As the scheduled February 1985 launch date got closer patch manufacturers AB Emblem and Swissartex set to work producing one-piece patches for the mission, but they were in for a second nasty surprise. In January, less than a month before the scheduled launch, NASA announced that Payload Specialist Jake Garn was being added to the crew.

This meant that the one-piece patches with a "Baudry" name tab were now obsolete, but both companies tried to minimize the damage by taking a manual approach to the problem. The Baudry name tabs were carefully trimmed away by hand and new "Baudry Garn" tabs were manufactured and sewn onto the patch bodies.

Continued problems with the TDRS-B satellite pushed the launch date back from February 20 to March 3, and then to March 7. Finally on March 1, only week before the scheduled launch, and with Challenger already on the launchpad, NASA announced that the STS-51E mission was being cancelled altogether.

The STS-51E mission patches, with their hand-trimmed bodies and sewn-on "Baudry Garn" name tabs, were now redundant.

This time the crew were reassigned to the next available flight - STS-51D Discovery - although due to differences in the payload Patrick Baudry was displaced to another mission to be replaced by Charles Walker.

With Bobko's crew now back on Discovery the original STS-41F insignia was brought back into service, this time with a "Walker Garn" name tab at the bottom. Nearly seven months on from the cancellation of the STS-41F mission the patches that had been produced for that mission by AB Emblem and Swissartex could now be re-used for STS-51D simply by sewing on "Walker Garn" name tabs.

Bobko's crew finally flew on the STS-51D mission on April 12, 1985.

Where do Lion Brothers feature in all this? STS-41F was cancelled only a month or so before launch so it seems likely that the company had already begun production of patches for this mission at the time. As with the other manufacturers the cancellation would have left them with worthless stock on their hands.

We know that Lion Brothers went on to produce patches for the STS-41G and STS-51A missions in late 1984, and for STS-51C which launched in January 1985. This implies that they were likely producing a "Baudry" name tab patch for STS-51E before the addition of Garn which was announced in January 1985. We don't know if they went on to produce "Baudry Garn" name tabs before the last minute cancellation of the mission at the beginning of March but these repeated changes may well have been the reason Lion Brothers stopped producing Shuttle mission patches at around this time.

Perhaps the final straw came when the STS-51D mission ended up using the STS-41F insignia plus a name tab. If the company produced a run of STS-41F patches but then disposed of them some time in the seven months before the STS-51D lineup was announced, only to find they could have re-used them on the new mission, this would have been depressing indeed.

Whatever the story we know that no Lion Brothers patch has been identified for the STS-51D mission or for any that followed.

The insignia shown on the right was created for the original STS-51D mission, with a crew consisting of Commander Dan C. Brandenstein, Pilot John O. Creighton, Mission Specialists John M. Fabian, Steven R. Nagel and Shannon W. Lucid, and Payload Specialists Greg Jarvis and Charles D. Walker.

However, the cancellation of the STS-51E mission led to the remanifest of the STS-51D mission, with most of Bobko's STS-51E crew being moved to STS-51D and the core of Brandenstein's STS-51D crew being moved to STS-51G.

A different payload on the STS-51G mission meant that Payload Specialists Jarvis and Walker were replaced by Patrick Baudry (originally scheduled to fly on STS-51E) and Saudi Prince Sultan Al-Saud.

The STS-51G mission insignia re-used the original STS-51D design with just the names of the Payload Specialists being changed in the tab at the bottom

AB Emblem had already begun production of embroidered versions of the original STS-51D mission patch (featuring a sewn-on "JARVIS WALKER" name tab) and put some examples on sale before the mission was re-manifest, but were able to re-use most of the patch bodies for the STS-51G mission with a different sew-on tab.

The loss of Challenger in January 1986 led to the immediate cancellation of the whole string of Shuttle launches scheduled to follow it - STS-61E which was scheduled for a March 6 launch, STS-61F scheduled for May 15, STS-61G sheduled for May 20 1986, and so on.

Of these missions, only STS-61E was close enough to launch that embroidered patches of the mission insignia had already entered into production. Mission insignia for STS-61F and STS-61G had been designed but no embroidered versions had been produced at the time of their cancellation, so only replica versions of these patches exist.