How about a small Duck in the bottom left corner, watching a shuttle go up on the right handside? Or maybe just the classic Duck with a banner saying "Good Luck Atlantis" or "RIP American Space Domination"? :P

All kidding aside, something like "Good Luck Atlantis" or just a shuttle behind the Duck would work quite well.

Few ideas:

1. Animated: have the shuttle taking off, then a ddg bumper sticker at bottom of shuttle.  Freeze frame zoom in and end with normal logo or duck with space helmet on.
2. Duck with space helmet with a sign that says "Google we have a problem" and hotlink to dontbubble.us
3. Add an exclamation point to duckduckgo!  where the exclamation point is the shuttle taking off and duck wearing space helmet.

great ideas! ill get started on it soon.

this is all i have so far:

i could try that, might be a little hard though.

working on it

i tried the space helmet, and it didnt really work out. Feel free for anyone else to try it. I do need help completing this though, i am going to add the duck, but i am trying to clean it up around the edges, and make the outside bubble the same color as the sky color on the inside. Anyone want to try and fix that? I cant do it for some reason.

thank you, i just want the outside to be the same color as the inside.