By Dale Skran, NSS Chief Operating Officer

I am pleased to announce that NSS has a new logo. NSS has also achieved some major milestones over the last year or so, including:

• A major grant from Blue Origin’s Club for the Future which will be dedicated to building the STEM pipeline so that an educated and inspired workforce is available to enable space exploration, development, and settlement.
• We are offering a digital subscription to the excellent NEW SPACE, The Journal of Space Entrepreneurship and Innovation (login required), to all NSS members, a member benefit with a value of 100s of dollars per year.
• We have started the NSS Career Center to connect NSS members to jobs of all kinds, but especially space related jobs
• Ad Astra magazines are now available on newsstands in the U.S. and Canada
• NASA has adopted plans for LEO commercialization and a gapless transition to future commercial LEO space stations that is virtually identical to the positions NSS has been advocating in conjunction with the Alliance for Space Development for the last four years
• The NASA Commercial Crew program has become an outstanding success, due in part to support from NSS and the Alliance for Space Development (ASD) over the last five years, culminating in the first private U.S. launched commercial orbital flight, Inspiration4.
• The NASA NEOSM asteroid detecting infra-red telescope has finally received a line item in the President’s budget and significant Congressional support, the culmination for three years of work by NSS and ASD.
• Interest in space solar power is higher than it has been for decades, as can be seen in the NSS position paper Clean Energy from Space: Has Space Solar Power’s Time Come?
• NSS hosted the first Space Settlement Workshop held in many decades.
• We re-booted space.nss.org to align the NSS website with our three major goals:
  • Protecting Earth from asteroids and comets
  • Bringing the vast resources of space, including clean energy, to all of humanity via space development
  • Supporting the settlement of space, making us an interplanetary species.

Taking all of the above into account, the NSS leadership team decided it was time to re-introduce NSS to the general public with a major marketing campaign that will play out over the next year. A key initial element is a new NSS logo that appeals to a younger audience, is obviously about space, and has an inspirational, optimistic feel.

The new logo package and usage guidelines can be found on the NSS web site here.

Over the next year, you will gradually see the new logo appear in a variety of places. This transition will not be instantaneous; please continue to use any existing materials you may have with the old logo until you receive new materials. In particular, please continue to distribute any old copies of Ad Astra you may have until supplies are exhausted. Your patience is appreciated.

Chapter members and leaders, note that in the logo usage guidelines is a special section on chapter usage of the new logo. Please note that unlike in the past, Chapters are being asked to use an official NSS chapter logo, which is just the new NSS logo with the words “A Chapter of” on top and a distinctive red line around it. The purpose of this logo is to tie each chapter to NSS in a clear, unambiguous fashion that also clearly shows that the organization is a chapter, and not the national organization. Additionally, chapters may have their own logo that does not include either the heritage NSS logo or the new NSS logo. Examples are shown in the usage guidelines.

Ad Astra!