

Photo: Yuri Menkevich

A 15-year old boy from the Kemerovo orphanage who took part in a children's contest to design a spaceship logo is to go down in space exploration history. The logo he submitted has been approved as the emblem for the next mission of the Russian shuttlecraft, the Infox.ru website reports.

Anatoliy Perminov, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, has approved the design as the emblem for the Soyuz TMA-15 mission scheduled to launch in May. The emblem was originally entered in a competition to design a logo for the previous Soyuz mission.

Yura Menkevich from the orphanage “Ostovok” (“A tiny island”) took part in the Soyuz TMA-14 Logo Contest. “His patch caught Roman Romanenko’s, the Russian cosmonaut’s, eye and he and immediately decided that it would be a perfect match for his next Soyuz crew,” the Roscosmos press service reports.

The logo features a golden angel against a black background supporting the ISS with his outstretched arms with a caption below reading: “Soyuz TMA- 15”

The next mission’s astronaut crew members will wear spacesuits bearing the approved patch. Similar logo-bearing suits will be provided to the backup crew, with no names on them, however.

The Soyuz TMA-15 is scheduled to be launched on May 27. The capsule is expected to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) two days later. It will transport the commander, Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, and two flight engineers - a Belgian astronaut from the European Space Agency, Frank De Winne and a Canadian astronaut, Robert Thirsk. They are due to return to Earth in November 2009.

A total of four manned Soyuz spaceships will be launched to dock with the ISS in 2009.