1 SOPS Space Surveillance

1st Space Operations Squadron (1 SOPS), Space Delta 9 — "Space Ghosts" · USSF · 2019-2023

Worn from 2019 to 2023 by an operator at Schriever, this subdued oval was the original 1st Space Operations Squadron patch for the crews flying America's space-based space surveillance fleet — Space Based Space Surveillance, the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP), and the Operationally Responsive Space smallsat that the wearer knew as ORS-7. Tracing its lineage to the 1st Aerospace Surveillance and Control Squadron of 1961 and reactivated 5 October 1987 as the 1st Satellite Control Squadron, 1 SOPS became the 1st Space Operations Squadron in January 1992 and passed from the 50th Space Wing to Space Delta 9 on 24 July 2020. The wearer's tour therefore straddled the Air Force–Space Force transition, when GSSAP's near-geosynchronous "neighborhood watch" satellites were quietly maneuvering to inspect and characterize objects in the belt for Joint Task Force–Space Defense. The design comes from a squadron member who goes by DeadUnicorn0229, who drew on Norse carvings of the old gods and kept it deliberately simple for how patches are actually stitched: it renders Heimdallr — watchman of the gods — standing in for the squadron's orbits, all wrapped in 1 SOPS markings. A fitting choice for the mission: the eternal watchman, already in orbit, watching everything else that is.