posted 08-07-2022 08:48 AM               

Space Cover 662: Fourth of July's Shuttle launch and landing

America proclaimed its independence from Great Britain on July 4th, 1776, becoming the United States of America and every fourth of July since has been celebrated as America's Independence Day: The Fourth of July.

Aerial fireworks are a big part of celebrating Independence Day but it was forty-seven years before a NASA manned launch created a spectacular aerial fireworks display on the Fourth of July. It finally did on July 4th, 2008, with the launch of STS-121, 47 years after Alan Shepard's Mercury-Redstone 3 launch in 1961.

Also, and surprisingly enough, no American had been in space on July 4th until the fourth (appropriately) flight of the Space Shuttle Program, STS-4; twenty-one years and 34 manned flights after Mercury-Redstone 3.

At the end of the STS-4 flight, Ken Mattingly and Hank Hartsfield landed orbiter Challenger at Edwards Air Force Base, CA on July 4th, 1982. President Ronald Reagan was there to welcome them and then for NASA to proclaim the Orbital Flight Test Program a success and the Space Shuttle operational. It was a very special Fourth of July/Independence Day event for the country.

The top cover, canceled on July 4, 1982 at EAFB, CA and signed by the STS-4 crew, marks the first time Americans had been in space on Independence Day, and the bottom cover canceled on July 4, 2008 and signed by the STS-121 crew, marks the first NASA manned spaceflight launch on the Fourth of July.

Viking 1 was scheduled to land on Mars on July 4th, 1976, America's Bicentennial, but was delayed to July 20. Then on July 4th, 1997, the Sojourner rover landed on Mars, followed on July 4th, 2016, with the Juno probe placed in orbit around Jupiter. So July the Fourth has had several significant US space events happen on that special national holiday.

Anyone have covers they'd like to be shown here for Sojourner's and Juno's Fourth of July celebrations?

posted 08-08-2022 04:12 PM               

I love your crew signed covers, Bob, for STS-4's landing and for the launch of STS-121. The STS-121 mission emblem cover was one of my own productions, mainly for NASA, and the earlier STS-4 emblem cover was a joint endeavor that my firm had a partnership with.

As requested, below are a couple of Mars Pathfinder landing covers, our nation's third Mars soft landing on July 4, 1997, when lander and micro-rover Sojourner touched down on the Red Planet 21 years after the first Viking lander became the world's first successful Mars landing vehicle.

In trying to locate a JUNO spacecraft cover for a Mars orbit insertion on July 4, 2017, I am still looking! But I did locate a JUNO cover with a July 10th cancellation at Pasadena, CA, for the spaceprobe's closest fly-by of planet Jupiter while flying over its Great Red Spot, the first-ever close-up study of this iconic storm. Can anyone else at the moment perhaps share one of their Mars orbit insertion covers?

Missing the cover mark by only a few days was the Mars Exploration Rover-B (MER 2003) mission that landed on Mars on July 7, 2003, only three days after the July 4th national holiday (see cover above).

There are other July 4th space cover events, though, with an Independence Day Celebration on July 4, 1962, at the now NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. It was a Texas-size barbecue in celebrating the nation's first seven astronauts with their families, a big event in "Space City USA," with that adopted nickname made official in 1967. I have seen some different cachet space covers for the astronaut celebration that I'll try to post up here when located or perhaps others can do so.

Last but not least, there was an "in-space" celebration on July 4, 1995, when Space Shuttle Atlantis on Mission STS-71 undocked in coming back home from the Russian Space Station Mir with a record number of astronauts and cosmonauts that had been living and working together in space.

posted 08-10-2022 12:20 PM               

I like the text line, NASA "Earth to Moon Team," of those first seven honored, though, only Shepard went to the moon almost a decade later while Grissom was going to command the first Apollo mission in 1967, but with Schirra taking his place.

The second cover, by space cover producer John Zaso of New York, NY, has a Houston machine cancel in which the cachet text indicates that the original astronauts will be making their new home in the Houston area while stationed at NASA's new Manned Spacecraft Center (now JSC).