Yearly, each the Army Black Knights and the Navy Midshipmen don particular soccer uniforms for the Army-Navy Sport. These distinctive unis honor a specific facet of their department, its historical past or its tradition. Navy introduced its new uniforms for the Dec. 10, 2022, matchup: a crimson, white and blue tribute to NASA.
The brand new uniform is paying homage to NASA’s spacewalk fits, with its distinctive crimson stripes, flag and NASA emblem patches and even the Helvetica sort NASA has used for many years. The pants, helmet stripe and gloves function the astronaut pin, first given in 1963 to members of the Mercury 7 mission.
Astronauts obtain the silver pin after finishing primary coaching, and the gold pin after the completion of a spaceflight. Mercury 7 was NASA’s first spaceflight program, to see whether or not it was even doable for people to remain in area and for the way lengthy.
One facet of the brand new helmet exhibits the NASA emblem in entrance of the moon.The opposite facet is a hand-painted image of astronaut Bruce McCandless II, a Navy graduate, as he made the first-ever untethered spacewalk.
In 1984, McCandless flew 300 ft away from the Area Shuttle Challenger with nothing to maintain him from slipping away from the shuttle aside from the Manned Maneuvering Unit and two cans of nitrogen to steer him. The picture of his spacewalk is now one in every of NASA’s signature historic photographs.
The uniform additionally options cleats designed to resemble moon boots, with shiny dots to signify stars. Blue socks with the NASA emblem spherical out the 2022 Navy uniform design.
The U.S. Naval Academy and NASA have a protracted historical past collectively. Fifty-four Annapolis graduates finally grew to become astronauts, together with the primary American in area, Mercury 7 astronaut Alan Shepard. Shepard was additionally the fifth man on the moon, and the primary man on the moon to play golf.
Together with Shepard and McCandless, different Naval Academy graduates have left a big footprint at NASA. Wally Schirra was the one astronaut to fly in NASA’s first three area applications, Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, and Jim Lovell commanded the Apollo 13 mission and efficiently returned the crew to Earth. Six of the 12 astronauts to set their footprint on the moon bought their begin within the Navy.
The 123rd Army-Navy Sport kicks off at 3 p.m. at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Monetary Subject on Dec. 10, 2022. The sport will air nationally on CBS.
— Blake Stilwell could be reached at blake.stilwell@navy.com. He will also be discovered on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Fb.
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