posted 12-16-2016 01:30 PM               

Space Cover #396: STS-47 (Spacelab-J)

This week's cover commemorates the STS-47 (Spacelab-J) mission aboard space shuttle Endeavour.

STS-47 was launched on Sept. 12, 1992 with Commander, Robert Gibson; Pilot, Curt Brown; Mission Specialists, Mark Lee, Jan Davis, Jay Apt, and Mae Jemison and Payload Specialist, Mamoru Mohri. Jemison was the first African American female and Mohri the first Japanese astronaut.

The Spacelab-J mission was a joint project between Japan and the United States. The mission was conducted with two shift operations. STS-47 landed on September 20, 1992 after 126 orbits and 190 hours 31 minutes 11 seconds.

posted 12-17-2016 04:04 AM               

John, following your image and the Ken's post, two points to consider:

• Postal cancel
  
• Logo cachet

Postal cancel should be considered not only according distance from launch pad to post office but primarly as the main philatelic knowledge of different philatelic covers.

Astrophilately is really place and date, and place can be only showed through different postal cancels. Obviously, cancels must be correctly quoted.

Thanks to Ken in a previous post some KSC were good and extensive described. In my case, the first one is a KSC machine cancel and the second one is a KSC hand cancel with killer bars.

Sometimes collectors non-astrophilatelists have asked me about if all STS covers should shown always the official NASA logo cachet.

At my opinion, the answer is easy: not mandatory, but preferable over other options. However, philatelic knowledge of existing material can be demonstrated by showing several covers with different logo cachet which must be explained, as Ken done too.

posted 12-17-2016 10:48 AM               

Both are the "official" cachet cover issues, meaning that they were available on KSC-NASA grounds throughout the shuttle Endeavour mission in Sept. 1992. Both cover types, with insert cards inside, were made available at all the on-base VIP and other launch guest viewing areas. In addition, the covers were also for public sale at the nearby US Space Camp/Astronaut Hall of Fame facility in Titusville.

Two of the provided postal cancels on both covers originated from the on-base KSC HQS. Bldg. postal unit. There are three different postmarks altogether; killer bar hand cancel on top, KSC/T-ville strike on bottom, but with it touching a KSC-meter applied sticker at bottom as well.

posted 12-18-2016 01:06 PM               

Besides a separate Spacelab-J cachet cover issue in addition to the routine STS-47 crew insignia cachet cover, maybe some collectors out there would like to know for what other shuttle missions were there a second, additional, or supplement cachet cover issued at the space launch center.

The first would be STS-9/Spacelab-1 in Nov. 1983, however, covers with a Spacelab-1 cachet were not available for public sale on the Kennedy Space Center itself. Many of the covers, though, were provided to KSC workers during the STS-9 mission from MBB/ERNO Spacelab agencies located in Germany and with USA offices in Washington, D.C. and Kennedy Space Center.

The first such "supplement" shuttle mission cachet cover would have to be for the first KSC landing of a shuttle orbiter on Feb. 11, 1984. It was Mission 41-B in
which NASA Exchange released a 3-color "Challenger - First KSC Landing" cachet cover, which by the way, are not as common as most would believe. But the special Challenger landing cachet cover was not first released for Mission 41-B, but for STS-7 in June of that same year.

It could perhaps be argued that the Challenger first landing cachet was indeed the "first true" supplement cover issued here at KSC. But as it turned out, STS-7 wasn't able to make a touchdown at Kennedy due to poor weather conditions, so Challenger and her crew were diverted to Edwards AFB, CA, after nearly 100 earth orbits. Most of the cachet covers were simply left over for the next Challenger mission opportunity, hopefully, that would be able to make the first KSC orbiter landing, which it did with 41-B.

The next supplement cover issue would be for the Challenger tragedy of STS-51L in Jan. 1986. Once again, NASA Exchange issued another companion cover with a "Teacher in Space" logo cachet meant to commemorate Christa McAuliffe's Challenger space voyage along with the NASA Teacher in Space program at the time.

More than 3 years later, a second companion cover had been printed for STS-30 with the first interplanetary shuttle mission in May 1989. It was the Magellan Venus radar mapper space probe that became the first supplement production of my own firm, SpaceCoast Cover Service. As a contract vendor to KSC, my small and new space memorabilia company was now providing all upcoming shuttle cachet covers for all on-base and near-off base space locations.

Many others would follow afterwards, but here are just a few of the first issues for now.