While at RISD during the NASA X RISD deisgn studio, we began to formulate the ideas for how the first NASA Mars Ascent Vehicles (MAV) would look like. At the time, the team decided to design and build two concepts around the MAV mission parameters. I thought  it would be cool to use this design challenge as the basis for creating the patch. This is how the icons on the patch began to develop. Because these vehicles were prototypes, these mission patches were manufactured in extremely limited quantities, and very few are still available