Vans and NASA Put Out Some Cosmic Kicks for 60th Anniversary

See more

What do you do when you're one of the hottest brands on the planet? 

If, like Vans, you're running neck and neck with Nike for the title of No. 1 footwear brand among teens — according to investment firm Piper Jaffray's latest survey — there's nowhere to go but up … and up.

Indeed, the California skate-shoe brand is teaming up with no less than NASA on the latest limited-edition Vans collection, which is set to drop online and in Foot Locker stores today (Nov. 2). 

Vans has decked out two of its most popular silhouettes for the new collection. The Old Skool, a classic plimsoll clad in either "pumpkin suit" orange or spacesuit white, brandishes the stylized NASA "worm" and John F. Kennedy Space Center logotypes on each flank, a U.S. flag attached via fabric fasteners above the heel, and a pull tab on the tongue that says "Shuttle" on the right shoe and "Mission" on the left. 

The second model, the ankle-hugging SK8-HI high-top, comes in black-on-white or white-on-black versions. It flaunts NASA's famous "meatball" insignia, patches for the Apollo 11 and Voyager 1 and 2 missions, and lunar overshoe-like ridges on the midsole.

A product-line sheet, leaked on Reddit, suggests that Vans is also releasing an orange duffel bag and a white, laptop-compatible backpack, both featuring NASA's worm logo, to round out the lineup.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

Jasmin Malik Chua
Contributing Writer

Jasmin Malik Chua is a fashion journalist whose work has been published in the New York Times, Vox, Nylon, The Daily Beast, The Business of Fashion, Vogue Business and Refinary29, among others. She has a bachelor's degree in animal biology from the National University of Singapore and a master of science in biomedical journalism from New York University.