posted 12-06-2009 04:37 AM               

Space Cover #34: Milestone Space Shuttle Launches

The cover of the week is actually 2 covers which commemorate milestone Space Shuttle launches. The first cover commemorates the first Shuttle/Mir docking and the 100th U.S. Manned Spaceflight since 1961. STS-71 with Orbiter Atlantis launched on June 27, 1995 and docked with Mir on June 29, 1995. This was the first of nine Shuttle/Mir dockings to prepare for the International Space Station.

The second cover commemorates the launch of STS-92 with Orbiter Discovery on the 100th Space Shuttle Launch since 1981 on October 11, 2000. The primary payload payload was the Z-1 truss. This truss carried many critical items for the station's attitude, communications, thermal and power control systems.

The pictorial cancels used on the STS-71 cover were designed by Joel Katzowitz, a graphic designer and close associate of Ken Havekotte of Space Coast Cover Service who provides to NASA the emblem launch covers it sells at its gift shops.

The pictorial cancel used on the STS-92 cover was designed by R. Van Waay, a German graphics designer whose artwork was selected after reviewing many other design submissions.

posted 01-29-2017 06:55 PM               

Another is a cover with ninth docking pictorial postmark used without the date stamp as a cachet:

posted 02-05-2017 03:42 PM               

However, I can show you a cover with the scarce STS-74 KSC launch postmark. It was applied in a very large size cover together with the landing KSC pmk (from Orlando branch).