posted 05-27-2023 01:34 AM               

Space Cover 703: Challenger landing at Kennedy Space Center

Back in Feb 2014, Bob McLeod and Ken Havekotte discussed in Space Cover of the Week 252 about first space shuttle landing at Kennedy Space Center (KSC). From my side, I have little to add.

Above cover shows the intended first landing at KSC for STS-7 mission. It sports a KSC machine cancel with date June 24, 1983, same date that Challenger actually landed at Edwards Air Force Base.

It is a wrong space cover with a wrong landing place cancel. In addition, cachet is also a bit wrong with blue colour left shifted.

For comparison, below a correct first landing space cover at KSC for STS-41B bearing same KSC machine cancel.

Are there outside other KSC space covers dated Jun 24, 1983 with this big 1 space cachet?. If so, please post here. We will be pleased to see other examples. Thanks.

posted 05-29-2023 02:34 AM               

Ken, thanks for your answer and images.

And yes, I was wondering if all June 24, 1983 covers with big "1" space cachet were postmarked with this same KSC mechanical cancel.

It could say that all covers were postmarked at same time and were requested by same person. Otherwise, if different KSC cancels can be found, then covers could have been postmarked in different days and requested by different people.

posted 05-29-2023 05:30 AM               

All of the "1" covers you see here were in my space cover cancel service control using the three different KSC cancel type devices. The machine and killer bar varieties were applied "on base" at the KSC Headquarters Bldg. postal unit. The round-dater hand cancel with no bars had been used at the main Orlando International Airport (OIA) postal station at the time.

During 1983, I was able to personally hand cancel all of my STS-7 covers while at OIA servicing and working on thousands of mission covers for myself and many other collectors and dealers using Space Coast Cover Service (SCCS).

There was another hand cancel type used for STS-11/41-B in Feb. 1984 that you can see depicted in Bob's earlier posted SCOTW #252 topic. That was a "short-lived" KSC-hand cancel device that had only been used on three shuttle missions in 1984. The history of that hardly seen or know cancel application was explained in #252. That was the first and only KSC hand cancel rubber stamp that had been used at the Merritt Island Post Office, which is where NASA's Kennedy Space Center and Launch Complex 39 is geographically located on.