Orbit issue 101 (March 2014)

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Editorial

ISSN 0953 1599 THE JOURNAL OF THE ASTRO SPACE STAMP SOCIETY

And on to the next milestone !

Issue No 101 March 2014 Patron:

I can’t pretend this was an easy issue to put together: after the sense of achievement of doing 75 issues culminating with #100 the prospect of starting all over again was a bit daunting and until a week or so ago I wondered how I would fill all forty pages but then the email system began to work and items flooded in so that I had in the end to leave some out.

Cosmonaut Georgi Grechko, Hero of the Soviet Union

COMMITTEE Chairman Ian Ridpath, 48 Otho Court, Brentford, Middlesex, TW8 8PY (E-mail : ian@ianridpath.com)

Although we are a tiny society we are truly international and this issue contains—in addition to home grown items—material from contributors in Italy, Poland, Russia, the Netherlands, Japan and the United States.

You might find one or two items a little left-field this time like my article on Baron Munchhausen but I am aiming as always to include material that might surprise you aanda you wouldn’t find in any other journal.

Chairman Emeritus : Margaret Morris, 30 Hilltree Court, Fenwick Rd, Giffnock, Glasgow G46 6AA (E-mail: m382morris@btinternet.com)

Hon. Secretary: Brian J.Lockyer, 21, Exford Close,Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset BS23 4RE (E-mail : b.lockyer365@btinternet.com)

Hon .Treasurer: Eve Archer, Glebe Cottage, Speymouth, Fochabers, Moray.

Scotland IV32 7LE (E-mail: orbitmag@aol.com)

I also aim to include as many stamp illustrations as possible and some pages like those devoted to the design work of Komlev and Levinovsky and those showing stamps for the constellations present a riot in colour—if you download from the internet to your PC. My wife has an iPad now and she has shown me how good Orbit looks in tablet form. (You’ll find out how to down load to an iPad on the back page of issue of our June 2013 issue if you like to sample this).

Orbit : Editor Jeff Dugdale, Glebe Cottage, Speymouth, Fochabers, Moray.

Scotland IV32 7LE (E-mail: jefforbited@aol.com)

Webmaster Derek Clarke, 36 Cherryfield Road, Walkinstown, Dublin 12 (E-mail: dclarke36@gmail.com)

Postal Auction Organiser: David Saunders, 42 Burnet Road, Bradwell, Great Yarmouth. NR31 8SL. (E-mail davidsaunders1@hotmail.co.uk)

Overseas Representatives: Australia: Charles Bromser, 37 Bridport Street, Melbourne 3205.

Belgium : Jűrgen P. Esders, Rue Paul Devigne 21-27, Boite 6, 1030 Bruxelles Eire:Derek Clarke, 36 Cherryfield Rd, Walkinstown. Dublin 12.

France: Jean-Louis Lafon, 23 Rue de Mercantour, 78310 Maurepas Russia: Mikhail Vorobyov, 31-12 Krupskaya Str, Kostroma United States: Dr Ben Ramkissoon, Linda Valley Villa #236 11075 Benton Street Loma Linda CA 92354-3182

However, two of the most interesting pages contain no stamps at all but summarise how thriving astrophilately is across Europe at least, as our Russian member Igor Rodin (Chair of the F.I.P. Section for Astrophilately) who also runs a regular website on our topic relates all the activity relating to the hobby in the past year.

I was also fascinated to see the GB glossy STAMP magazine give rocket mail a big treatment in its current (March) issue and I hope to re-rerun that article in a future edition. I’ll also be reporting on how my second sojourn into competing with my exhibit on the ISS has fared. It’s being judged in Perth, Scotland in April.

Life Members: UK - George Spiteri, Ian Ridpath, Margaret Morris, Michael Packham, Jillian Wood. Derek Clarke (Eire,) Charles Bromser (Australia.) Tom Baughn (U.S.A.,) Ross Smith (Australia,) Vincent Leung Wing Sing (Hong Kong.)

Meantime my best wishes .

www.astrospacestampsociety.com

Copy Deadline for the June 2014 issue is May 14th by which time all material intended for publication should be with the Editor.

ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION RATES Members in UK—£15 in Europe (EU and non-EU) - €30

© Copyright 2014 The Astro Space Stamp Society. No article contained herein may be reproduced without prior permission of the Author and the Society.

Elsewhere - $45 equivalent Juniors (under 18) £6.50

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NASA Goes Global report by Bert van Eijck This March a space event you only can dream of 2014 begins in the Japanese capital Tokyo. On a huge location with more than 3500m2 space you will find here 400 original and replica objects you have never seen together before, like a Space Shuttle, space capsules and space suits, rocket engines (or parts of it), satellites, a Moon Rover and much more as photos, graphics, videos and films. This NASA exhibition which is called “A Human Adventure” is travelling . the world. Before Japan it visited Istanbul (Turkey), Madrid (Spain), Stockholm (Sweden) and in The Netherlands: Utrecht. There last Autumn I was one of many thousand visitors.

Honouring Yuri Gagarin, including philatelic items and his brief case

In Summer 2013 the exhibition was officially opened by US astronaut Charles Duke (Apollo 16, 1972) and Dutch astronaut André Kuipers (ISS, 2011/12). Weeks before this ceremony in the ‘Beatrixgebouw – the building where it all happened – the roof had to be opened to get in the giant nose of Space Shuttle Atlantis, complete with its burned heat shields.

Author with NASA cap in the souvenir shop at exhibition

“A Human Adventure” tells the story of space history, beginning with the ‘dreamers’ like Da Vinci and Jules Verne.

Centuries later there were the rocket engineers Sergei Korolev and Wernher von Braun and so many others.

Sputnik 1 started the Space Race with Yuri Gagarin as the First Man in Space.

Several First Day Covers with space stamps and cancels of the Soviet Union of this early period are seen in showwindows. These are loaned out by the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center Inc. in Hutchinson. This museum is famous for its restoration of space objects and creating mock-ups. Top-achievement is the Liberty Bell 7. This Mercury capsule was found after 38 years at a depth of 4.5 kilometres in the ocean. It was cleaned and restored and now is the piece de resistance of the Kansas museum.

The exhibition not only tells the story of Mercury, but as well of Gemini and Apollo. On a black and white television screen we see and hear the famous speech from Kennedy in 1962: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Liberty Bell 7 Mercury capsule As recovered from 38 years in the ocean then after restoration and replica on display at exhibition

The Apollo missions to the moon get a lot of attention with as a highlight the Lunar Rover Vehicle (mock-up) of Apollo 17 with commander Eugene Cernan. It’s so realistic: even moondust is to see on splash-boards and chairs.

You can learn a lot here about the Shuttle fleet or Space Stations. Many mock-ups tell the story, complete with photos, films and videos.

A special section of the exhibition tells the story of the European Space Agency (ESA) with its scientific satellites, rocket Ariane and launch base Kourou (South America).

Newest satellites are Cryosat-2, measuring climate changes, 3

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and GOCE, studying ocean water circulation. To scale there is the Rosetta-lander Philae.

End of this year there will be an encounter with the comet Chuyumov-Gerasimenko and even a landing is foreseen.

Experiments ESA astronaut André Kuipers did in the International Space Station you can try yourself at the exhibition. You also can research a model of the module Columbus for ISS. “Dutch Dimensions” was the name of the last part of this space event. More than a hundred instruments to be used in space are here displayed along with models of both exclusively Dutch satellites—ANS (Astronomical Netherland Satellite) and IRAS (Infra-Red Astronomical Satellite).

Curious: at the end of “A Human Adventure” there is a model of space plane SXC-001 (Space Expedition Corporation), a Dutch enterprise. This space plane will take tourists soon (?) to space from launch base on the Caribbean island of Curacao.

Rocket engine Titan, launcher for Gemini Gemini capsule

If you want the complete story: see ORBIT no. 94, June 2012, “Space Tourism Soon Reality.”

Shuttle with doors open

cargo

Greeting US flag on the moon

ESA’s cometlander Philae

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Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan in Lunar Rover

AndrĂŠ Kuipers, Dutch astronaut

Manned Maneuvering Unit

ESA’s Columbus module for ISS

Space plane SXC001 for tourists

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Baron Műnchhausen German Flight Pioneer !!

The term “Munchhausen” is most often heard today in the medical condition Műnchausen (sic) Syndrome in which a patient will simulate an illness in order to gain attention, making it a kind of hypochondria. An extension of this is the related Műnchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSP) in which the patient will deliberately project such symptoms upon a weaker member of his or her family, often a child. So where does the term come from, wonders your editor ?

Freiherr Karl Friedrich von Műnchhausen (1720 –97) was a German baron who as a callow youth was sent as page to Duke Anthony of Brunswick-Lűneburg. Later in his career Műnchhausen served in the Russian Army fighting in the Ottoman wars against the Turks. Having led a military life full of incident Műnchhausen returned home and became notorious, much in the way of Falstaff in Shakespeare’s History plays, for making ludicrously exaggerated claims about his achievements.

Right vignette for a German margarine product featuring the Baron’s exploits with the cannon ball episode, as on the fdoi indicia and Ajman MS below, being a popular theme for treatment

These included riding cannonballs—as referenced in half a dozen examples opposite—travelling to the Moon and extricating himself from a sucking marsh by pulling himself up on his own hair or bootstraps !!

These fantastical tales were collected and published anonymously a decade or so before Munchausen himself died and then translated into English as The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchhausen by Rudolf Eric Raspe.

This narrative conflated a number of other tall tales not originally associated with Munchhausen, who rightly complained that he had been considerably maligned by their outrageous nature as he certainly had not claimed many of them as his own.

In Raspe’s 1895 narrative, the Baron was “credited” with such accomplishments as shooting fifty brace of ducks with one shot, flogging a fox out of its skin, shooting a stag with cherry-stones, being attacked by a wolf which he then managed to turn inside out, throwing a silver hatchet at attacking bears which rebounded into his hands and then took him to the Moon from which he returned by means of an ingenious invention, also referenced in a couple of stamps opposite.. !

Czechoslovakia 1970 from a set about famous canons shows the Baron piloting a cannon ball.

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The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchhausen CHAPTER XIX. The Baron crosses the Thames without the assistance of a bridge, ship, boat, balloon, or even his own will: rouses himself after a long nap, and destroys a monster who lived upon the destruction of others.

MY first visit to England was about the beginning of the present king's reign. I had occasion to go down to Wapping, to see some goods shipped, which I was sending to some friends at Hamburgh ; after that business was over, I took the Tower Wharf in my way back. Here I found the sun very powerful, and I was so much fatigued that I stepped into one of the cannon to compose me, where I fell fast asleep. This was about noon: it was the fourth of June; exactly at one o'clock these cannon were all discharged in memory of the day. They had been all charged that morning, and having no suspicion of my situation, I was shot over the houses on the opposite side of the river, into a farmer's yard, between Bermondsey and Deptford, where I fell upon a large hay-stack, without waking, and continued there in a sound sleep ……

CHAPTER VI. The Baron is made a prisoner of war, and sold for a slave - Keeps the Sultan's bees, which are attacked by two bears - Loses one of his bees; a silver hatchet, which he throws at the bears, rebounds and flies up to the moon; brings it back by an ingenious invention; falls to the earth on his return, I WAS not always successful. I had the misfortune to be overpowered by numbers, to be made prisoner of war; and, what is worse, but always usual among the Turks, to be sold for a slave. [The Baron was afterwards in great favour with the Grand Seignior, as will appear hereafter.] In that state of humiliation my daily task was not very hard and laborious, but rather singular and irksome. It was to drive the Sultan's bees every morning to their pasture-grounds, to attend them all the day long, and against night to drive them back to their hives. One evening I missed a bee, and soon observed that two bears had fallen upon her to tear her to pieces for the honey she carried. I had nothing like an offensive weapon in my hands but the silver hatchet, which is the badge of the Sultan's gardeners and farmers. I threw it at the robbers, with an intention to frighten them away, and set the poor bee at liberty; but, by an unlucky turn of my arm, it flew upwards, and continued rising till it reached the moon.

How should I recover it? how fetch it down again? I recollected that Turkeybeans grow very quick, and run up to an astonishing height. I planted one immediately; it grew, and actually fastened itself to one of the moon's horns.

I had no more to do now but to climb up by it into the moon, where I safely arrived, and had a troublesome piece of business before I could find my silver hatchet, in a place where every thing has the brightness of silver; at last, however, I found it in a heap of chaff and chopped straw. I was now for returning: but, alas! the heat of the sun had dried up my bean; it was totally useless for my descent: so I fell to work, and twisted me a rope of that chopped straw, as long and as well as I could make it. This I fastened to one of the moon's horns, and slid down to the end of it. Here I held myself fast with the left 7

Souvenir sheet from Latvia in 2005 showing various fantastic episodes from the Baron’s life in labels, with the stamp depicting the Baron’s dexterity with bees and other creatures. The flight episodes are illustrated in the labels to the left of the sheet.

The margarine label vignette shows the Baron setting off for the Moon via the Turkey bean plant a la Jack and the Beanstalk whilst Ajman 1971 shows the Baron arriving at the Moon in order to recover the silver hatchet

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hand, and with the hatchet in my right, I cut the long, now useless end of the upper part, which, when tied to the lower end, brought me a good deal lower: this repeated splicing and tying of the rope did not improve its quality, or bring me down to the Sultan's farm. I was four or five miles from the earth at least when it broke; I fell to the ground with such amazing violence, that I found myself stunned, and in a hole nine fathoms deep at least, made by the weight of my body falling from so great a height: I recovered, but knew not how to get out again; however, I dug slopes or steps with my finger nails (the Baron's nails were then of forty years' growth), and easily accomplished it.

CHAPTER XVIII. A second visit (but an accidental one) to the moon - The ship driven by a whirlwind a thousand leagues above the surface of the water, where a new atmosphere meets them and carries them into a capacious harbour in the moon - A description of the inhabitants, and their manner of coming into the lunarian world - Animals, customs, weapons, of war, wine, vegetables, &c.

A SECOND TRIP TO THE MOON. I HAVE already informed you of one trip I made to the moon, in search of my silver hatchet; I afterwards made another in a much pleasanter manner, and stayed in it long enough to take notice of several things, which I will endeavour to describe as accurately as my memory will permit.

I went on a voyage of discovery at the request of a distant relation, who had a strange notion that there were people to be found equal in magnitude to those described by Gulliver in the empire of BROBDIGNAG. For my part I always treated that account a s fabulous: however, to oblige him, for he had made me his heir, I undertook it, amid sailed for the South seas, where we arrived without meeting with anything remarkable, except some flying men and women who were playing at leap-frog, and dancing minuets in the air.

On the eighteenth day after we had passed the Island of Otaheite, mentioned by Captain Cook as the place from whence they brought Omai, a hurricane blew our ship at least one thousand leagues above the surface of the water, and kept it at that height till a fresh gale arising filled the sails in every part, and onwards we travelled at a prodigious rate; thus we proceeded above the clouds for six weeks.

The king, we found, was engaged in a war with the sun, and he offered me a commission, but I declined the honour his majesty intended me. Everything in this world is of extraordinary magnitude! a common flea being much larger than one of our sheep: in making war, their principal weapons are radishes, which are used as darts: those who are wounded by them die immediately. Their shields are made of mushrooms, and their darts (when radishes are out of season) of the tops of asparagus. Some of the natives of the dog-star are to be seen here; commerce tempts them to ramble; their faces are like large mastiffs', with their eyes near the lower end or tip of their noses: they have no eyelids, but cover their eyes with the end of their tongues when they go to sleep; they are generally twenty feet high.

As to the natives of the moon, none of them are less in stature than thirty-six feet: they are not called the human species, but the cooking animals, for they all dress their food by fire, as we do, but lose no time at their meals, as they open their left side, and place the whole quantity at once in their stomach, then shut it again till the same day in the Illustrations from the original next month; for they never manuscript indulge themselves with food more than twelve times a year, or once a month. All but gluttons and epicures must prefer this method to ours.

There is but one sex either of the cooking or any other animals in the moon; they are all produced from trees of various sizes and foliage; that which produces the cooking animal, or human species, is much more beautiful than any of the others; it has large straight boughs and flesh-coloured leaves, and the fruit it produces are nuts or pods, with hard shells at least two yards long; when they become ripe, which is known from their changing colour, they are gathered with great care, and laid by as long as they think proper: when they choose to animate the seed of these nuts, they throw them into a large cauldron of boiling water, which opens the shells in a few hours, and out jumps the creature.

At last we discovered a great land in the sky, like a shining island, round and bright, where, coming into a convenient harbour, we went on shore, and soon found it was inhabited.

Below us we saw another earth, containing cities, trees, mountains, rivers, seas, &c., which we conjectured was this world which we had left. Here we saw huge figures riding upon vultures of a prodigious size, and each of them having three heads. To form some idea of the magnitude of these birds, I must inform you that each of their wings is as wide and six times the length of the main sheet of our vessel, which was about six hundred tons burthen. Thus, instead of riding upon horses, as we do in this world, the inhabitants of the moon (for we now found we were in Madam Luna) fly about on these birds.

Nature forms their minds for different pursuits before they come into the world; from one shell comes forth a warrior, from another a philosopher, from a third a divine, from a fourth a lawyer, from a fifth a farmer, from a sixth a clown, 8

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stays at home, and sends the head only, which is suffered to be present incog., and return at pleasure with an account of what has passed.

The stones of their grapes are exactly like hail; and I am perfectly satisfied that when a storm or high wind in the moon shakes their vines, and breaks the grapes from the stalks, the stones fall down and form our hail showers. I would advise those who are of my opinion to save a quantity of these stones when it hails next, and make Lunarian wine.

It is common beverage at St. Luke's. Some material circumstances I had nearly omitted. They put their bellies to the same use as we do a sack, and throw whatever they have occasion for into it, for they can shut and open it again when they please, as they do their stomachs; they are not troubled with bowels, liver, heart, or any other intestines, neither are they encumbered with clothes, nor is there any part of their bodies unseemly or indecent to exhibit.

Munchhausen meeting a lunarian on Ajman 1971

&c. &c., and each of them immediately begins to perfect themselves, by practising what they before knew only in theory.

When they grow old they do not die, but turn into air, and dissolve like smoke! As for their drink, they need none; the only evacuations they have are insensible, and by their breath. They have but one finger upon each hand, with which they perform everything in as perfect a manner as we do who have four besides the thumb. Their heads are placed under their right arm, and when they are going to travel, or about any violent exercise, they generally leave them at home, for they can consult them at any distance; this is a very common practice; and when those of rank or quality among the Lunarians have an inclination to see what's going forward among the common people, they stay at home, i.e., the body

Their eyes they can take in and out of their places when they please, and can see as well with them in their hand, as in their head! and if by any accident they lose or damage one, they can borrow or purchase another, and see as clearly with it as their own. Dealers in eyes are on that account very numerous in most parts of the moon, and in this article alone all the inhabitants are whimsical: sometimes green and sometimes yellow eyes are the fashion. I know these things appear strange; but if the shadow of a doubt can remain on any person's mind, I say, let him take a voyage there himself, and then he will know I am a traveller of veracity.

Japan’s Constellations Series—sheet 4 issued in December 2013 Rather earlier than expected given the previous issuing pattern, Japan produced the fourth in its wonderfully blue and silver series on the constellations late last year. Thanks to Haruki Ikuro for this information.

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Polish Orbit Reader Has These Items for Sale all @ £2 Jan. 19,2014 Stanisław Wekka - P.O.Box 239 , 85-001 Bydgoszcz 1 , Poland ,

E-mail : stanstamps2@poczta.onet.pl FOR SALE Older Russia/USSR items dedicated or related to SPACE INVESTIGATION & FLIGHTS - ASTRONOMY-PIONEERS OF ROCKETS & SPACE-SHIPS CONSTRUCTINGStan has for sale over 600 rare and interesting Russia/USSR MNH commemorative postal stationeries and stationeries with topical postmarks ,commemorative covers/cards issued

by Cities Collectors Clubs or Cities Youth Collectors Clubs (emissions 500 – 3000), FDCs, Maxi-cards, …, of late 1950’s to 1990’s : -late 1950’s – 1960’s - 281 piece s, -1970’s – 204 pieces , -1980’s – 100 pieces , -1990’s – 35 pieces ----------------------------------------------------Now retired Stan is interested in selling these above mentioned covers and cards. Most of the items are rare and interesting being a mixture of younger and older ones but his price for each item is GB £2.20 ( = US $ 3.60 = € 2.66 ) less 10% of discount of total.

A few SCANS of randomly selected examples of his items are provided: 1-Scott# 3333-Moscow-04.10.1967-10 Years of Cosmic Era,Galaxy ,Artificial Sat.Sputnik 1,

13-Scott# 3261-Post-cover issued Nov.23,1970-Day of CosmonauticsErevan-Symposium “Man in Space”-Leonov in Outer Space,

14-Scott# 3261(?)-Post-cover issued Jan.29,1975-Moscow-12.04.1975-Day of Cosmonautics,Gagarin,

15-MNH post-cover issued April 03,1964- „Mars 1 „ did 106 millions kilometres, 16-MNH post-cover issued Dec.07,1976-The Rocket TechnicsElectrotechnical rocket lifter (ERD) - GDL for Solar Rocket of 1929-33,

17-Post-card issued 29.03.1982-Kaluga-17.09.1982-Constantin E.Ciolkowski-pioneer of rocket constructing,

18-Post-card issued 29.03.1982-Kiev-April 09-26,1983-Cons.Ciolkowski and his Rocket, rare red cancel,

2-Scott# 3543-Moscow-12.04.1968-Communic. via Satellite-Molniya 1, 19-Post-card issued 29.03.1982-Moscow-30.08.1982-125th Anniv. of C.Ciolkowski Birthday,

3-Scott# 2728-Minsk-03.02.1966-Earth – Luna 9 , 4-Scott# 2456-Perm-12.02.1962-Space probe and its path to Venus,

20-Post-card issued 19.03.1971-Zvezdny Gorodock( Star City )-12.04.1971Y.Gagarin.

5-Scott# 2083-Moscow-04.06.1960-Sputnik 3 Leaving Earth , 6-Scott# 2083-Czelabinsk(Tshelabinsk)-04.04.1960-Sputnik 3 Leaving Earth,

7-Scott# 2310-Moscow-07.10.1960-Lunik 3 Photographing Far Side of Moon, 60 k, 8-Scott# 2309-Moscow-07.10.1960-Lunik 3 Photgraphing Far Side of Moon, 40 k 9-Scott# 2578 IMPERF.-Lvov-12.04.1963- Vostock 1,2,3,4, 10-Scott# 2510-Moscow-Aug.06-07,1961-Vostock 2 and G.S.Titov, 11-Scott# 2627 PERFORATED PAIR-Moscow-Aug.11-15,1962-Vostock 3,4 , 12-Scott# 2627 IMPERFORATED-Moscow-Aug.11-15,1962-Vosctock 3,4,

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Spotlight on Europe’s Astronauts : 1 With British ESA selectee Major Tim Peake slated to fly to the ISS on EO 46/47 late next year via Soyuz TMA-19M, in the company of Russian Commander Sergei Zaloytin and NASA’s Tim Kopra we count down to that momentous moment with a review of European astronauts to date.

(Ironically wealthy British entertainer Sarah Brightman will most likely have preceded him by several weeks as a space participant) !

The European adventure began when Dr Ulf Merbold of West Germany was launched as the first member of the European Space Agency Corps in 1983 on STS-9 Columbia (28.11.838.12.82) In 1988, NASA nominated Merbold as payload specialist on the IML-1 mission, which launched on STS-42 in January 1992. The following year he was Science Coordinator for the second German Spacelab mission, D-2 (STS-55).

In 1993, he also started training to fly the first of two joint EuropeanRussian missions to the space station Mir, called Euromir 95. In 1994, he was the first ESA astronaut to fly into space with Russia, on board Soyuz TM-20, returning on Soyuz TM-19. During his three spaceflights he spent a total of 49 days, 21 hours and 38 minutes in space.

Merbold (now 73) is still working for ESA in the Microgravity Promotion Division of the ESA Directorate of Manned Spaceflight and Microgravity at ESTEC, but he is no longer a member of the European Astronaut Corps.

Stamps shown : St Vincent 1989 Malawi 2010, CAF 1984, CAF 1987, Guinea 1995, CAF 1985, Ghana and Gambia 1986 & Guinea MS 1985

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Soviet Designers Promoted Space Achievement in Propaganda Issues The work of two of Russia’s greatest philatelic artists combined in the late 1970’s and early 80’s to tell the complete story of a Soviet spaceflight in a remarkable and colourful series of stamps devoted to the politically motivated Intercosmos project, asserts your Editor.

This took cosmonaut-researchers from Soviet satellite states such as Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Cuba and Mongolia to work on a orbiting space station for a week or so and in doing so produced some space “firsts” - like putting the first “person of colour” and the first two “third world” cosmonauts in space to the embarrassment of the United States.

These two great stamp designers were German Komlev and Yuri Levinovsky, whose achievements unless you are a collector of Russia may not be well known.

German Alexeevich Komlev was born in 1933 in the Kostroma region into the family of strict parents, his father being a military officer and his mother an “Old Believer”. After school he first worked as a stevedore before serving in the Soviet Navy for four years from 1952.

Then for ten years he designed posters and other trade publicity for several firms until in 1966 he began his philatelic design work and soon established a reputation as a professional artist.

Much of Komlev’s early work for the Soviet postal authorities was art related such as his set for Rembrandt in 1976 and that

for Rubens (sampled below) the following year but he was asked to concentrate on issues showing space activities as the USSR—perhaps trying to compensate for the loss of the space race to the Moon – celebrated almost every spaceflight, manned and unmanned from the late 1970’s, providing work for a small group of philatelic artists. Komlev was allowed to meet and befriend some of the cosmonauts and in particular got to know the veteran cosmonaut Vladimir Dzhanikebov, who himself designed some space issues. The photo below shows Komlev with the cosmonaut and his wife

in 1981.

After the break-up of the Soviet Union Komlev created the first designs for such new stamp issuing territories as Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. He is also credited with over a hundred designs for countries beyond the aegis of the USSR like Jordan, Madagascar, The Marshall Islands and Tanzania.

His output was prolific, the related work rate very exacting and it took a toll on his health. He became quite ill in 1999 and died the following summer, aged 67.

German Komlev’s contemporary space philatelic artist and friend was Yuri K. Levinovsky who was born in Penza, in the Central Volga region in 1933. After considering a career as a sports coach he studied art at the College of Fine Arts in Moscow.

After leaving the college, he first worked for the Exhibition of Soviet Industry Achievements in Moscow and started as stamp artist in 1965.

His first stamp celebrated 9th All-Union [school-age] Sports competition held in Minsk. The next decade was rich with over 80 stamps, 200 pre-stamped envelopes and over 100 postcards. Besides this he worked on many commissions as a book illustrator. His main early topic in stamps was political events – though other ones were also successfully undertaken. Between 1968 and 1989 Levinovsky produced 18 Soviet “space” issues (38 stamps and 5 minisheets) inspired by Komlev. Together they visited Star City in Moscow to meet “artist-cosmonauts” Alexei Leonov and Vladimir Dzhanibekov to discuss stamp designs.

His memory was quite lucid even in his old age and he was working on design shortly before his death in 2008.

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The purpose of Intercosmos programme which between March 1978 and May 1981 was to take nine guest cosmonauts into space for around a week to an orbiting Salyut space station and was very largely a propaganda exercise.

All the “guests” had of course been through rigorous medical tests, had trained for the mission and had a programme of work to conduct of behalf of their government or their country’s universities. But the crews (a Soviet cosmonaut and a guest) were very much ships that pass in the night to the series of resident crews and their work was not integrated into that of the long term Salyut programme.

Whilst the visitors were welcome because they brought up fresh supplies, news, mail and relieved the routines and potential boredom of the residents, all that could have been achieved by the arrival for a short period of two Soviet cosmonauts.

Instead rookie guests who would never fly again went up largely so the Soviets could make political capital, in flying for example the first black/Hispanic cosmonaut in Arnaldo Mendez of Cuba in 1980 and the first Asian cosmonauts in Pham Tuam of North Viet Nam that same year and the Mongolian Jügderdemidiin Gürragchaa the following year.

It can be argued convincingly that the modest scientific purpose and achievement of these week-long flights did not merit lavish celebration via three stamps each, particularly when you take into account that long-duration missions in the same Salyut series programme such as Soyuz 29 (launched in March 1978) or Soyuz T-5 (March 1982) lasting 140 and 211 days respectively merited only one, or two designs.

The task given to stamp designers Komlev and Levinovsky was to produce three stamps for each mission in such a colourful and attractive way that collectors all over the world would buy them and so help to publicise the Soviet space programme. Although Komlev did the first four and Levinovsky the five later missions the cartoon style of all these issues make their artwork indistinguishable.

In all but a few cases the detail of space activity is so generic that most of the stamps could have related to any of the nine missions. Few show a cosmonaut who is easily identifiable as one associated with that flight, not even the Cuban being the obvious exception on account of his colour.

Beyond that the design concept for each set of three is an inflight image sandwiched between a scene depicting mission preparation and an end of mission scenario. The 6k was to be issued on launch day, the 15k on docking day and the 32k on landing day. The essential difference between the sets is simply the flag of the guest cosmonaut and the year date of issue. Along the top of most issues is the Russian wording for “International Spaceflights” Because twenty-six of the twenty-seven designs were issued a selection of them can be constructed to show the complete and detailed story of a typical Intercosmos project mission and when placed together the stamps provide an attractive thematic narrative, as shown on page 15

The Missing Stamp And why was one stamp not issued ? The many Salyut space station missions were plagued with difficulty and failure though all participants made it safely home. The crew most in peril was the Bulgarian one launched in April 1979, as Soviet Commander Nikolai Rukavishnikov and Bulgarian Georgi Ivanov were unable to dock with Salyut when the primary engine of their Soyuz 33 ferry failed and they had to make an immediate and perilous return involving forces of over 15g. On the crew’s safe landing the Soviet cosmonaut commented, “It may have only been two days, but it seemed like a month” !

Two stamps were issued depicting the cosmonauts getting ready to enter the Soyuz capsule and after landing, but the third one would have shown an interior of the space station so was not used.

Nevertheless a small number escaped destruction and made it on to the market and at least two of our members Pierre Bauduin and Alec Bartos have copies in their collections. Despite the mission’s failure Bulgaria has faithfully celebrated this mission, marking several of its anniversaries with handsome issues.

A Late Flowering Designed by Levinovsky, stamps were issued for three later flights in the Intercosmos programme involving guest cosmonauts from countries outwith the same sphere of Soviet influence—France (June 1982), India (April 1984) and Syria (July 1987) .

All were celebrated with three stamps in the same style as the first nine sets—and a minisheet as shown on next page.

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ORBIT

A Unique Sequence ?

Even if the purpose of these Intercosmos issues was an overblown propaganda exercise, the stamps show a fascinating process in great detail, enabling a presentation arguably unique across all possible themes in philatelic history of a highly technical, scientific and human achievement as the layout below demonstrates.

Captured in a rare photograph in 1977 Russian stamp designers from left to right: Anatoly Ivanovich Kalashnikov (1930-2007) Yuri Nikolaevich Artsimenev (b. 1937) Nikolay Kirillovich Litvinov (b. 1930) German Alexeevich Komlev (1933-2000) Yuri Konstantinovich Levinovsky (1933-2007) (Thanks to Alec Bartos and Mikhail Vorobyov for assistance in completing the detail of this article.)

Mini-sheets accompanied the late grouping of issues in the Intercosmos Series—designed by Yuri Levinovsky

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ORBIT

The Sequence of a Typical Soviet Space Mission

From top left clockwise: gruelling processes test cosmonauts’ fitness (stamps for Syrian, Bulgarian and Hungarian missions), the Soyuz rocket moves by rail to the launchpad (Polish); technicians do final checks of the crew module (E.German), cosmonauts pay their respects at Gagarin’s statue (Syrian), are bussed to launchpad (Vietnamese) and wave to colleagues (Czech) before ascending to enter capsule (Bulgarian).

Stamps shown smaller than in actuality

(l-r): the crew embarks (Cuban), lift of the Soyuz rocket (Mongolian), after two days in space the Soyuz ferry approaches and docks with Salyut (E.German and Czech); joining the resident crew the visitors offer the tradition Russian welcome gifts of bread and salt (Hungarian) before joint operations begin (Vietnamese).

(l-r) the crew exercise and socialise in the Salyut complex (Cuban and Rumanian) as their progress is tracked (Polish); after a week or so the visitors prepare to depart and return to Earth (Mongolian) undergoing major g-forces as they descend (Vietnamese)

(l-r) the descending capsule is monitored to a hard landing (Czech and Bulgarian); the crew write their names on the capsule (Cuban) before

after checks returning to the Moscow control centre ( Rumanian) to hold a press conference with their back-ups (Hungarian).

15

ORBIT

Un-manned Satellites on Postage Stamps : 37

By Guest Contributors Don Hillger and Garry Toth

Azur , Aeros and Dial-Wika Azur, meaning “blue�, also called German Research Satellite (GRS), was launched into a near-polar orbit on November 7, 1969.

A joint effort by NASA and the German Bundesministerium fur Wissenshaftliche Forschung (BMWF), Azur carried seven instruments designed to acquire data on the terrestrial radiation belt. The satellite was in the form of a cylinder with a blunt cone at one end. Azur has not been found on any postage stamps, but launch covers do exist. The authors also know of three non-launch covers (one from French Guyana, 1979 and the other two from West Germany, 1966 and 1968, whose cachets depict Azur.

Cf. http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/dev/hillger/Azur.htm

There were two Aeros satellites: Aeros-1 was launched on December 16, 1972, and Aeros-2 was launched on July 16, 1974.

Both satellites were cylindrical, about 0.9 m in diameter and 0.7 m long. The five experiments they carried were designed to study the upper atmosphere and ionospheric F region, especially with regard to the influence of solar UV radiation.

Aeros is found on only one postage stamp issued by Czechoslovakia in 1975 (s.

2026). It is also found on the non-launch cover from French Guyana mentioned in the previous paragraph as well as on the cancel on some Aeros launch covers.

A version of this article was first published in the Astrophile for Spring 2013

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ORBIT

Aeros 1 and 2 covers

See http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/dev/hillger/Azur.htm for more illustrations 17

ORBIT

Dial-Wika, a joint French-German effort, was launched on March 10 , 1970 along with DialMika. The name Dial- Wika is a contraction from the French word ‘Diamant’ (diamond) and the German words ‘Allemand’ and ‘Wissenschaft’ (scientific knowledge) and ‘Kapsel’ (capsule).

The slight difference in the name Dial-Mika comes from the German word ‘Mini’ (small).

Dial-Wika was designed to study time and space variations of the local electron density and geocoronal Layman-alpha radiation density, while Dial-Mika was to monitor the performance of the three-stage Diamant- B launch vehicle. The Dial-Wika satellite was commemorated on several postal items issued in 1970 by France and Ras Al Khaima, many of which featured the launch rather than the satellite itself. No postal items are known to show the Dial-Mika satellite.

Cf: http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/dev/ hillger/Azur.htm#dial-wika_covers Below drawings by Mark Wade from Encyclopaedia Astronautica of the Diamant rocket family.

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ORBIT

When Postmark Color Makes a Difference

By Jim Reichman

which postmark colors were unofficial is not totally accurate.

Those who collect Soviet, space-related, special postmarks frequently find that several of those postmarks were applied in a variety of ink colors.1 Some of these colors are considered “official” (i.e., those colors the postal authorities intended and approved a postmark to be applied in) while other colors are considered “unofficial” (i.e., those colors not approved). The ability of a collector to get a postmark applied in an unofficial color on a commemorative cover is through a process referred to as favor canceling.

The most complete catalog of what the “official” Soviet, special-postmark colors were is Yakobs’4. However, this series of catalogs rarely mentions anything about the unofficial colors. Collectors who compare the official colors in Yakobs against the total range of colors reported in Pfau and Winick can, by a process of elimination, identify those colors which are unofficial. After 1978 (the Winick catalog publication date) collectors have to rely on dealer lists, online auction listings, and covers in their own collections The most frequently-used, official ink color was black to identify the range of favor postmark colors created after (about 58%) while the most frequently-used, unofficial ink that date. color was red (about 9%). The other ink colors used officially This author’s own attempt to compile such a list is were red (about 12.4%), violet (about 2.6 %), blue (about 1.3%), and finally green (about 0.7%). Interestingly, black ink documented in a recent study of the Soviet, space-related, was sometimes an unofficial color for some special special postmarks applied to covers between 1958 and 5 postmarks.

For this reason collectors should not 1991 . This report goes beyond a simple listing and automatically consider a black ink postmark application to be includes many illustrations, translations, background information, and usage analyses. Some of the most official. interesting findings from this study came from interpreting Collectors wanting to know the full range of colors the postmark background data contained in the Yakobs (official and unofficial) a particular postmark was applied in postmark catalogs. One of those findings was that can (at least up until their publication date) find this occasionally there are significant meanings associated with information in either the Pfau or the Winick catalogs. 2,3 the official colors used to apply some of the special Collectors wanting to know which of those application colors postmarks. were official and which were unofficial will have to skip the Pfau catalog (which does not try to indicate which colors Not knowing about these color-coded meanings can make a were unofficial) and check out the Winick catalog (which big difference in how a collector interprets the significance does). Unfortunately, this latter catalog’s identification of of a particular space cover and can also lead to cataloging 1

“Special postmarks” are those that contain graphics and/or text that commemorate an event, person, or anniversary.

2 Winick, L E., Soviet Space Catalog, 1978.

3

Pfau, H. R., Soviet Union I, 1977.

Local post (additions) from John Beenen Without any doubt you read my article about city post and unauthorized issues.

From our well-known Dutch correspondent Bert van Eick I received some interesting additions. First he pointed me to an article from Orbit 70 of June 2006, page 10-12 entitled: ‘Dead NASA cancels are still alive and kicking!!’

4

Yakobs, V. A., a) Special Postmarks of the USSR, l 922-1972, 1976; b) Special Postmarks of the USSR 1973-1976, 1979; c) Special Postmarks of the USSR, 1977-1980, 1982; d) Special Postmarks of the USSR, 19811991 (in 5 volumes), 2007.

5 Reichman, James, Philatelic Study Report 2013-1, Space-Related Soviet Special Postmarks, 1958 to 1991, 25 December 2013.

Another source of local post is described in Orbit 77, March 2008, page 32-36 entitled : ‘U.S.Prime Recovery Ships and Covers’.

That article deals with cancels on board of the recovery ships for the returning astronauts after their flight. He distinguishes the Prime Recovery Ships (PRS) where astronauts personally were recovered and the SRS, the Secondary Recovery Ships, floating around somewhere else in case of emergency (e.g at the landing of Gemini 8 Armstrong and Scott). The PRS cancels are of primary importance, indeed.

In this article he discusses his own rubber stamps of NASA on covers at the occasion of a flight of Gemini, Apollo or Skylab.

So, real local post. There exist 42 of such cancels. Most of those covers possibly could not be found or became rather Van Eick shows all 40 types of cancels. Some of them still expensive due to their obscurity. However, I have seen that could be found, e.g. Skylab. I am pleased to remind you some of them still are for sale at the internet at reasonable about these items as examples of local post. prices.

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ORBIT Figure 1 – Poltava Philatelic Exhibition

errors. Take, for example, the cancel shown in Figure 1 whose design includes images of Vostoks 1 through 6 spacecraft just above the flags.

This postmark was used to create covers commemorating a philatelic exhibition in the city of Poltava. That exhibition opened on 15 July 1963 and closed a month later on 15 August 1963. The cancel was applied officially in three different colors: black, red, and blue. The Winick catalog reports all three of those postmark colors under two different dates, 15 July (Winick#s 855, 855A, & 855B) and also 15 August (Winick#s 886, 886A, & 886B).

Figure 3—Red Kiev Postmark on Vostok-1 Anniversary Cover

Based on that catalog reporting, collectors might interpret this to mean that all three postmark colors were used on both of those dates. In actuality, only one color was used on the first date and one other on the second date while the black color was not use on either !! The reason for this is that the Poltava postoffice only officially used red ink to apply this postmark to covers on the opening day of the exhibition, blue ink on the closing day, and black ink for canceling covers on all the exhibition days in between. (Yakobs#s 1150a, b, v).

these cities created a wide variety of special envelopes, club cachets, club overprints, and even vignettes (artistic, pasteon labels) to help create philatelic covers to commemorate the anniversary. That city was Kiev and readers probably have some of those commemorative covers in their own collection. Those covers may be canceled with the Kiev version of the spaceflight anniversary postmark applied in either black, red, or blue ink (Winick#s 284H I, & J; Pfau# S50; Yakobs#s 899a & b). An example of one of these covers with the postmark applied using red ink is shown in Figure 3.

Whether or not a cosmic philatelist values a cover differently because it can be determined to be an openingor closing-day cover from a philatelic exhibition is a matter of personal collecting choice. If these types of color-related usages do make a difference, then there are several more that collectors will want to know about – some related to exhibitions or meetings and others related to national holidays and anniversaries. Two of these that might, perhaps, pique space collectors’ interests even more, can be found in the following examples.

The blue-ink version of this Kiev postmarks is, as correctly identified in the Winick catalog, an unofficial, favor cancel. Only the black and red versions were official colors.

Readers who have covers in their collection with the red-ink postmark version, probably already know that that version is valued (in Pfau and Winick catalogs) at about 3 times the value of the black-ink version. Normally collectors might surmise that the reason for this valuation difference was due to the fact fewer covers of one color exist over the number of the others that were made. The circumstances that caused that variation is very rarely, if ever, identified and collectors, perhaps, accept this situation as some type of random happenstance.

Example #1 – Vostok-1, First Anniversary. Philatelic recognition of this anniversary was a big deal especially because launch-day covers from back in 1961 were so limited due to the secrecy of that space event at least until Cosmonaut Gagarin landed successfully. The Soviet post office helped collectors create one-year anniversary covers by designing and using a special postmark to commemorate this spaceflight anniversary event. See an example of one of these postmarks in Figure 2. The postmark was made available for canceling covers at postal facilities in 17 cities across the USSR. The collectors’ club in one of Figure 2 –Kiev Postmark for Vostok-1 Anniversary 6

Reichman, James, “Classic Soviet Astrophilately-Cosmonautics Day 1962 Issues” , Orbit, June 2012, pp 27-31

Luckily, in this particular case, the Yakobs catalog does explain why the red colored postmarks are rarer than the black versions. The reason was that the Kiev postoffice only officially used red ink during the exact (down to the hour), one-year anniversary of the Vostok-1 spaceflight ! In other words, Gagarin’s spaceflight began with lift-off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 09:07 a.m. on 12 April 1961 and Gagarin landed by parachute at 10:55 a.m.7 This Kiev, redink postmark was therefore only used officially to cancel covers from 9 a.m. until 11 a.m. on 12 April 1962. The rest of the time black ink was used . Thus the red color of this postmark on a collector’s cover does make a significant difference in how that cover is interpreted and valued.

7

Newkirk, Dennis, Almanac of Soviet Manned Spaceflight, Gulf Publishing Co., 1990, p 24

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ORBIT Figure 4 – Red Perm Voskhod-2 Spaceflight Anniversary Postmark

Example #2 –Voskhod-2, First Anniversary. Many philatelic commemorations of this anniversary were created in March 1966 using a Soviet special postmark that featured a cosmonaut performing a spacewalk outside his spacecraft in orbit over the Earth. See an example of one of these from the city of Perm in Figure 4.

This postmark is dated 18 March 1966 which, as readers will recall, is the one-year anniversary of when Voskhod-2 was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. On board were Cosmonauts Pavel Belyayev and Alexei Leonov. Cosmonaut Leonov performed the world’s first spacewalk shortly after achieving orbit. After about a day in orbit, the crew prepared for an automated re-entry but that failed. On the next orbit, the Voskhod crew tried re-entry again, this time using manual procedures. The re-entry was successful but inaccurate. The landing capsule (with the cosmonauts in it) overshot the designated landing zone by 3,200 kilometers then settled onto deep snow in a heavily forested area about 180 kilometers northeast of Perm. To make things worse, the landing capsule’s radio location beacon was ripped off as it fell through the trees.

With night setting in, recovery crews thousands of kilometers away, and wolves howling all around them, the two cosmonauts hunkered down in their capsule to wait for rescue. The landing date was 19 March.

The two were eventually rescued the next day, 20 March 1965, but not before a lot of ruckus and excitement possibly involving the airport and air-rescue support facilities at Perm. What role the citizens of Perm played or witnessed in the Voskhod-2 crew rescue is not known for sure but it must have left a significant impression on them. Their involvement also resulted in their city being chosen, along with only 4 others, to have one of the Voskhod-2 special anniversary postmarks available at their local postoffice.

The Perm postmarks were applied “officially” in three different ink colors: black, red, and green. In this case, the ink color really does make a significant difference because it helps collectors identify two things about their Voskhod-2 anniversary covers: a) which of two locations in the city of Perm the postmark was applied at and b) which of two different dates the postmark was applied on.

For example, the black-colored postmark versions were only applied on 18 March 1966 at the Perm postoffice. The red and green versions, on the other hand, were actually used to cancel covers only on the next day, 19 March 1966, i.e., the one-year anniversary of the Voskhod-2 landing and all of the excitement in Perm. Collectors, uncomfortable with the fact that a postmark dated one date was used to cancel covers a different date, need to know that this was a common practice for Soviet special postmarks. In some of these cases, the fact that this happened was indeed only indicated by using a different color of ink. This is just another confirmation that, indeed, color does make a difference.

Figure 5—Green Voskhod-2 Anniversary Postmark on Perm Cover Showing Forest landing

Color may also make a difference in the location where a postmark was applied. In this Perm postmark case, the green ink version (see an example on a cover in Figure 5) was only applied to covers at the Perm postoffice. The red-ink applications, on the other hand, were only applied to covers at a temporary postal booth set up at the local television station by the postoffice. See an example of one of these in Figure 6.

The reason why Voskhod commemorative covers were being canceled at the TV station was just part of the hoopla surrounding a series of special TV programs broadcast on 19 March to recount the flight of Voskhod-2 and the events related to the landing and recovery of the cosmonauts in a forest near Perm. Who knows, part of those TV broadcasts might have included a TV camera at the temporary postal booth showing these commemorative covers being canceled.

Although no markings to indicate this were seen on any of these covers (so far), some lucky collector might own a cover that was canceled on live TV !!

The three examples described above are but a few of the 44 situations noted in the study report where the ink color of a postmark does matter and provides extra meaning to commemorative covers that collectors might be interested in. Readers desiring this type of postmark background information can find it in either Yakobs’ catalogs (in Russian) or in my latest philatelic study report (in English).5 This report can be ordered at the following web site: http://www.americanastrophilately.com/ Reichman.html

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Figure 6—Red Voskhod-2 Anniversary Postmark on Perm Cover Showing Belyayev

ORBIT

Stuck in the Ice (Saga of the Early, Cosmic-Era Rescue of the Mikhail Somov)

by Jim Reichman Around the beginning of this year, world attention was briefly focused on the plight of the Russian research vessel Academic Sholakski which had become ice-bound in the Dumont d’Urville Sea approximately 190 kilometres east of the French Antarctica research station by the same name.

[See location pointed out by the right-most arrow in Figure 1.] The ship, with a crew of 22 and 52 passengers [19 scientists, 4 journalists, 26 tourists, the expedition leader’s wife, and 2 children], had been attempting to recreate the voyage and scientific measurements achieved during the Douglas Mawson Antarctic expedition 100 years previously i.

This recreation was interrupted when the Sholakski became stuck in the ice on Christmas Eve 2013.

Distress signals were raised and three vessels were dispatched to try and rescue the ship: the Chinese ice breaker-research ship Xue Long (Snow Dragon in English), the French research vessel L’Astrolabe, and the Australian icebreaker Aurora Australis. The L’Astrolabe (without an icebreaking hull) had to turn back because of heavy ice while the icebreaker Xue Long got to within 11 kilometres on 27 December before getting stuck herself. The icebreaker Aurora got to within 19 kilometres on 30 December before encountering extreme ice conditions and stopping for fear of also becoming stuck in the ice.

After mulling over the situation, the decision was finally reached to evacuate the Shokalski passengers via helicopter. This was done on 2 January using the Chinese helicopter which ferried the 52 passengers from an ice landing pad cleared near the Shokalski to an ice pad near the Aurora. Once on board the Australian icebreaker the passengers were transported back to Australia. The crews on the Xue Long and Sholakski remained with their ice bound ships hoping for either the ice to clear enough on its own or be broken up by the US Coast Guard heavy-icebreaker ship Polar Star. This latter ship had been dispatched on 5 January to see if it could create an exit path for the two ships. As it turned out the Polar Star’s services were not needed because both ships were able to finally break free on their own on 8 January and they headed, as fast as possible, back out to open seas.

Chelyuskin Ship Rescue 1934 As dramatic as this rescue may have seemed to many, it actually pales in comparison to some of the previous polararea rescues of Russian ships. Take, for example, the rescue of the Soviet steamship Chelyuskin in 1934. The Chelyuskin left Murmansk in northeast Russia on 10 August 1933 and headed east across the polar passage above Siberia toward the Bering Sea on the east side of Russia. The ship, with 111

A.A.T. 1982 Figure 1 – Mikhail Somov Souvenir Sheet

passengers and crew became stuck in the ice in September 1933. Attempts were made to reach their location with an icebreaker but they failed. The ship drifted with the ice floes for 5 months until 13 February when the ice finally broke through the ship’s hull allowing it to flood and causing the ship to sink.

Luckily the expedition leader had the foresight to have food, survival supplies, and tent shelters prepositioned on the ship’s deck. These were quickly offloaded onto the ice as the ship slowly keeled over and sank.

Suddenly their survival situation went from serious to dire.

The Soviet government quickly enlisted the help of any small airplanes that were available in the far east part of Russia and started flying them in to a spot near the survivors after they had scraped out a make shift runway on top of the ice floes.

These planes had limited space for passengers and some were only able to rescue a couple people at a time.

The first of these flights arrived on 5 March (almost a month after the ship had sunk) and took out the women and children. It was not until 13 April 1934 that the last of the survivors were airlifted out.

One of the pilots instrumental in organizing many of these flights and one of those who brought out the last of the survivors was Nikolai Kamanin.

See the commemorative stamp in Figure 2 noting his role in this ship rescue. Spaceflight aficionados will quickly note that this is the same person who later, as a Colonel-General Figure 2 - Rescue Pilot in the Soviet Air Force, was the N. P. Kamanin & Plane 22

commander of the cosmonaut training facilities and personnel from 1960 to 1971ii.

Kamanin and the six other Soviet pilots supporting this air rescue were all awarded their nation’s highest honour, i.e., the Hero of the Soviet Union and its accompanying gold-star medal. In fact, they were the first Soviet citizens to receive this award and medal. A souvenir sheet commemorating the 50th anniversary of those first awards is shown on its official first day cover in Figure 3. This same title and medal are routinely awarded to Soviet cosmonauts after their first spaceflights. This situation is acknowledged in this souvenir sheet by including images of a space station and a spacewalking cosmonaut in its design (at the arrow).

Somov. This ship was able to reach the Somov and created a path to open seas by 26 July. This meant that the Somov had been stuck in the ice a total of 133 days.

These dates (15 March – 26 July 1985) are included in the design of the souvenir sheet commemorating this sea rescue at the location indicated by the left arrow in Figure 1. This sheet is but one of seven philatelic items commemorating this rescue event: two stamps (Figure 7); one souvenir sheet (Figure 1); one overprinted older stamp (Figure 5); one pre-stamped, artistic envelope (Figure 9); one first-day, artistic envelope; and one special, first-day postmark. The postage issues are summarized in Table 1 along with their catalog numbers while their first day of issue postmark is shown in Figure 4 iii.

Figure 3 - 50th Anniversary of Hero of the Soviet Union Medals

Mikhail Somov Ship Rescue 1985 A second example of a harrowing ship rescue involves the Soviet research and re-supply ship Mikhail Somov. The Somov was re-supplying the Soviet Antarctic station Russkaya in the southern-hemisphere fall season of 1985 when it became stuck in the ice in the Ross Sea area. The location of the ship is shown near the research station (marked by a red star) at the position pointed at by the left-hand arrow in Figure 1. Most but not all of the supplies for the Russkaya Antarctic station had been off-loaded and the research crew exchange had been accomplished using the ship’s helicopter in difficult weather conditions. Those weather conditions worsened, including winds gusts up to 180 km/hr, and the ship became tightly locked into the ice floe on 15 March 1985. At this point there was nothing the ship could do but drift along with the ice at about 6 to 12 km per day away from the research station.

By late March, it was apparent that the Somov would not be able to free herself from the ice. At this point helicopters were used to ferry 77 of the 130 people on board to the ship Pavel Korchagin. The remaining 53 members of the crew stayed with the ship to wait for an icebreaker to arrive or the spring ice thaw, whichever would occur first.

The Soviets dispatched the icebreaker Vladivostok from a Russian far east port on 10 June 1985 to attempt to free the 23

Figure 4 – First Day of Issue Postmark for the Somov Research Ship Rescue Stamps Figure 5 Overprinted Mikhail Somov Research Ship Stamp

The ice-bound dates are also included in the overprint on the Mikhail Somov commemorative stamp from a 1980 set of Soviet scientific research vessels (Scott#4801; Pevzner#5290 ; Michel#5014).

This overprinted stamp is shown in Figure 5. The overprint reads: “15 March – 26 July 1985, Adrift in the Antarctic Ice”.

Modern, Cosmic Era, Satellite-based Rescue Support In the case of the sea rescue earlier this year, it would not be hard for readers to imagine a whole battery of satellite based sensors and capabilities that assisted in every phase of that rescue. Perhaps one of the first things the captain of the Sholakski might have done was to activate the SARSAT (i.e., Search and Rescue, SatelliteAided Tracking) emergency beacon. Since this was a Russian vessel, that beacon would have been known as the COSPAS beacon. COSPAS is the equivalent acronym created from the Russian words meaning “Space System for the Search of Vessels in Distress”. This satellite system

ORBIT Figure 6 - COSPASSARSAT Souvenir Sheet

would have relayed information on the distress signal’s owner and the location of the beacon. See Figure 6 for a souvenir sheet issued on 15 October 1987 commemorating the COSPAS-SARSAT satellites and system.

Also possibly available to the captain of the Sholakski would have been location information from satellite-based global positioning systems (GPS). Again, since this was a Russian vessel, they would probably have used the Russian version of that system called GLONASS rather than the US GPS. GLONASS is the acronym created from the Russian words meaning “Global Navigation Satellite System”.

Rounding out the satellite-based capabilities undoubtedly used during the rescue would have been weather satellites to keep track of the storms passing over the rescue area as well as satellite-based photo and radar imaging systems to help keep an eye on the ice pack and potentially help locate weaker ice areas that ice breakers might use to get to the stranded ships.

Pre-Cosmic Era Position Determination Aids Needless to say, none of this satellite-based navigational, positional, and overhead surveillance information were available to the crew and rescuers of the Chelyuskin back in 1934. What positional information they had would have been derived from use of a sextant, clock, and periods of clear weather when the Sun, Moon, and the horizon were visible to make the angular measurements needed to manually compute their position on the ice floes.

This information could then be radioed to the rescuers so they could be located either by the ice breakers or aircraft trying to come to their rescue.

Early Cosmic Era, Satellite-based Rescue Support Fast forward to 1985 when the Somov became stuck in the Antarctic ice. This rescue occurred about 28 years into the cosmic era when a lot of experimental progress had been made in creating the space-based capabilities that the Sholakski rescuers used. Unfortunately for the Somov none of those systems were available on a worldwide scale when that ship needed them.

Although the COSPAS-SARSAT became operational in 1984 it was limited to regional coverage only. A ship in distress had to be within 2300 kilometers of a COSPASSARTSAT ground station and

then the system could only achieve 20 km positional accuracy after no less than two passes over the beacon transmitting a distress signal. This accuracy was dramatically improved by the time of the Academic Sholakski rescue after the distress beacons where changed to a more accurate frequency and the signals were coupled with GPS positional information iv.

The GLONASS satellite system first started launching operational satellites in 1982 but a full constellation (enough for whole Earth coverage) was not achieved until 1995. The system was plagued with reliability issues and really did not achieve consistent, worldwide coverage until 2011 v. It is doubtful that the Somov had this capability available to them for determining their position. Similarly, the initial GPS worldwide coverage was not considered operational until 1995 vi.

Without these satellite-based positional aids the Somov crew had few options left to determine their position that could be radioed to rescue ice breakers. Their one option was, like the Chelyuskin in 1934, the sextant.

Unfortunately, as mentioned above, they were frequently caught up in blowing snow storms. Even when in clear weather conditions, they were in the polar perpetual darkness since this was late fall and early winter in Antarctica. The Sun, used for some of the positional calculations, never came above the horizon to compute those measurements. This also meant that satellite-based imaging systems, which depended on the Earth’s surface to be illuminated by the Sun, were of no help for imaging the ice pack to help the icebreaker find weak spots in the ice pack that might be Figure 7 (far left)– Close-up of Rescue Stamps Showing Cosmos 1500 Imaging the Ice Floes Near the Somov Figure 8 – Somov Ship Rescue Stamps Showing Ice Breaker Vladivostok Approaching the Somov

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exploited to create a path to the stricken ship.

Luckily, the Soviets had one cosmic-era ace up their sleeves. This was an experimental, space -based system being developed called Okean in Russian (“ocean” in English). The Okean series of spacecraft were being designed to use radar to image the ocean surface to determine conditions like the thickness and coverage density of the polar ice floes. Such radar-based observations were able to image the ice despite the weather and the darkness conditions around the Somov.

One of these experimental Okean satellites was Cosmos 1500 (launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome on 28 September 1983) and was still functioning in 1985. The satellite was tasked to image the area where the Somov was stuck and those images were relayed to the icebreaker Vladivostok. An example of one of these images can be found online at the URL in the endnote reference vii. This web page also shows the crack seen in those images that the Vladivostok exploited and the route taken to reach the Somov. The envelope cachet in Figure 9 pictures the Vladivostok escorting the Somov back to open waters after finding where she had been stuck in the ice.

Figure 9 – Commemorative Cover Showing Vladivostok leading Somov Out of the Antarctic Ice Floe Below maximum card showing the Chelyuskin sinking. The caption indicates "50th Anniversary Stamp and Maximum Card Showing Supplies being Offloaded to the Ice as the Chelyuskin Sinks".

The crucial role that Cosmos 1500 played in the rescue of the Somov was later commemorated in the se-tenant stamp pair issued in 1986. These stamps are listed in Table 1 and a scan is shown in Figure 8. The scene depicted in this stamp pair includes an image of the Cosmos 1500 satellite (see the close-up scan in Figure 7) illuminating the ice off of Antarctica using radar as well as the icebreaker Vladivostok with its spot light illuminating the bow of the Somov in the polar darkness.

The Somov was not the first ship whose rescue was aided by early, space-age satellite assets but it was probably the most dramatic from that era. Unfortunately, as long as man continues to stretch the limits of nature by attempting to navigate in the freezing polar ocean areas, the Academic Sholakski will not be the last ship to become stuck in the ice and rescued with the aid of satellites.

I

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Mawson See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Kamanin Iii See Reichman, James, Philatelic Study Report 2013-1, SpaceRelated Soviet Special Postmarks 1958 t0 1991, 25 December 2013, page 822.

Iv http://www.sarsat.noaa.gov/406vs121.pdf V See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS Vi See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System Vii See page 5 at http://www.dlr.de/rd/Portaldata/28/ Resources/dokumente/rp6/3b_Present-GMES-W.pdf Ii

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Below 1989 United Nations OKEAN fdc See Hilger/Toth Okean postal items listed at http:// rammb.cira.colostate.edu/dev/hillger/radarsat.htm

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Soyuz 4-5: the first space mail service

by Umberto Cavallaro

The first space mail delivery service was operated by Soviets in January 1969, during the spasmodic final phase of the USSR/USA “Moon Race”.

Both Americans and Soviets had suspended their space activities for extended periods after,respectively, the tragedies of Apollo 1 and Soyuz 1. After 18 months of redesign and testing, the Americans restart the race.

Apollo 7 has successfully flight-tested the new spacecraft which will bring American astronauts to the Moon. For the first time three astronauts have orbited the Moon, aboard Apollo 8. Even Soviets had many misadventures and now they must recover lost time and stake all on landingon the Moon, which they hope to reach ahead of the Americans.

They start again with docking tests in orbit.

On January 14th, 1969 Soyuz-4 lifts-off piloted by the rookie cosmonaut Vladimir Aleksandrovič Šatalov. Actually the launch was planned the day before but, for the first time in the history of the Soviet space programme, it was delayed due to adverse weather condition. The following day also Soyuz-5 was launched, carrying onboard three cosmonauts at their first mission: Boris Valentinovič Volynov, Aleksej Stanislavovič Eliseëv e Evgenij Vasilëvič Khrunov.

Goal of the mission was to finally carry out the original mission originally foreseen for the first Soyuz mission in 1967, and test the main phases and most critical techniques of the Soviet Moon landing programme: the transfer of crew members between two manned spacecraft, with the aim of preceding the pre-announced Apollo 9 mission. Even the Soviet programme includes in fact the transfer of one

cosmonaut from the command module to the lunar module. Šatalov maneuvers his spacecraft in the rendezvous with Soyuz-5 and the two spacecraft link up and interconnect their electrical and mechanical plants. It’s a new record: for the first time two manned spacecraft dock in space. TASS broadcasts: “Today was born the first Space Station ever”.

However, there is no direct way by which cosmonauts may transfer from one spacecraft to the other. After docking, Eliseëv and Khrunov start their preparation for the EVA required to reach Soyuz-4. The preparation phase is broadcast live by Soviet TV. During the 35th orbit cosmonauts start to egress from their spacecraft. It’s the second Soviet EVA ever. A problem occurred to Khrunov who catches on wires while exiting. This distracts Eliseëv and he forgets switching on the camera. Only few pictures of this historical event are video-recorded by the external camera and no TV image exists. Šatalov lowers pressure to allow cosmonaut companions to enter Soyuz-4.

This article is excerpted from pages 137-139 of the book by Umberto Cavallaro, “Propaganda and Pragmatismo in the race to the Moon”, Ed. Impremix, Torino 2011, 186 pp (in Italian – English version in preparation) It first appeared in English in issue no 15 of AdAstra (December 2012) and is produced by the kind permission of its author, the Editor.

Stamps showing the crew transfer All issued in 1969 except the Mongolian issue bottom row centre which 1971

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They come and deliver some letters for the Commander and the Izvestia and Pravda newspaper issued the day of the Šatalov‟s launch.

The two spacecraft remain docked for 4 hours and 35 minutes. Then they undock and re-enter the atmosphere on their own, and land reaching a new record again: for the first time a crew return back to Earth aboard a spacecraft different from the one used to fly to space.

During the Soyuz-5 re-entry, with Volynov returning alone, a new tragedy is only just avoided. The retrofire module fails to separate completely, despite the fact that the explosive bolts fire. A similar problem had already occurred during some Vostok and Voskhod missions, as well as during the Mercury mission of John Glenn, but the Soyuz Service Module is far bigger and heavier.

Once the Soyuz starts reaching the atmosphere, Volynov loses control of the craft and the two modules assume the most aerodynamically stable position, with the heavy descent module, and its light metal wall, at the front and the heat shield in the rear. The rubber seal on the hatch begins to smoke and, wearing no space suit, Volynov is himself beginning to feel uncomfortably hot and realizes he only has seconds to live. His body is strained upwards against restraining straps instead against the seat, as planned. Luckily the struts between the descent and service modules burn completely: one more explosion and the spacecraft tumbles into the proper position for re-entry.

The force exceeds 9G. The parachute deploys irregularly and the fuel for the control thrusters, that are supposed to stabilize it, was exhausted. Meanwhile Volynov falls into a faint because of toxic smoke. The craft lands in the snowy Ural Mountains, thousands of miles far from the planned landing site. Even though the spacecraft lands in a snow bank, it still hits hard. The landing shock is such that Volynov is thrown across the cabin and breaks some of his front teeth, but survives. It is minus 38 degrees Celsius outside (-39 degrees Fahrenheit). Volynov realizes that the rescue team will take hours to locate him. Many hours later, helicopters spot the downed spacecraft and land nearby. The rescuers find the capsule's hatch open -- no one inside, and no trace of the cosmonaut.

Following his footprints and the bloody spots where he has spit in the snow, they find him a few kilometres away, in the hut of peasants who are keeping him warm. No news of this is ever printed in the Soviet press at that time. The secret is kept until 1997.

The first Soviet documents of space mail In preparation for this joint mission, the Soviet Ministry for Communication prepared 10.000 stationaries with a 4 kopeks imprinted stamp. The cachet, designed by the artist Jurij Levinovskji, features a rocket and an envelope with the inscription “Earth-Cosmos-Cosmos-Earth”.

The Ministry also prepared a special date postmark to be used at the Cosmodrome at launch and during the mission from January 14th to 18th. As reported by Julius Cacka, covers exist postmarked on January 13th, the day in which the launch of Soyuz 4 was originally planned.

An envelope addressed to Commander Šatalov by General Kamanim, director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre of Star City, was postmarked on January 14th, 1969 and officially embarked on Soyuz-5 which was launched the following day. Khrunov was in charge of delivering it to Šatalov together with newspaper of the day before and a letter from the wife of Šatalov, enclosed in an official envelope, marked as “Mail of Pilots-Cosmonauts of the URSS”.

The envelope does not bear stamp or postmark. Šatalov signs both the covers, and adds the handwritten notation “Onboard Soyuz-4 15-1-1969”. Then he records the cover with the onboard TV-camera.

The flown Soyuz-4/Soyuz-5 envelope [From the collection of Renzo Monateri] The four kopeks stationary sent to Šatalov by Kamanin, Director of Star City‟s Cosmonaut Training Centre (shown top of next column). One 10 kopeks stamp featuring Beregovoy was added in order to cope with the “Space mail” tariff, but left uncancelled.

Addressee: Outer Space – to the Commander of the craft A parade, to celebrate the latest Soviet space achievement is “Soyus 4” Šatalov Vladimir Alexandrovič organized at Kremlin, along with other cosmonauts and Sender: Earth, Launching Site – Kamanin.

Premier Brežnev. A deserter from the Soviet Army aiming for [From the collection of Renzo Monateri] Brezhnev, fires his gun wildly, missing Brezhnev but hitting The notation (partially unreadable, because of the cachet) the car in which many cosmonauts riding, including reads: “Onboard craft Soyuz 4”. Signed by Šatalov. The Beregovoj, Leonov, Nikolaëv and Tereškova. All are envelope contained four pages addressed to Šatalov: - the uninjured, but the ceremony is suddenly cancelled. first by the General Nikolaj Petrovič Kamanin, (one of the 27

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first five USSR heroes and responsible for the training and tutoring the cosmonauts, the “cosmonauts’ mother hen”), - a second sheet by the members of the State Commission, - a third page by the testing team of the base, a fourth by the Cosmodrome‟s military unit that had supervised the launch.

Message by the State Commission [From the collection of Renzo Monateri] (shown opposite) Dear Vladimir Alexandrovič!

We are very glad and proud of You. We trust Your flight goes on ok. No comment to you or to the craft you are piloting. We wish that the same success of the initial phase will continue during the whole flight.

With our best regards Kirimov (Commission’s President) Afanasyev (Minister of Metal and Mechanics Industry) Mišin (the Chief Designer, successor of Korolëv) Kamanin (others)

On the left (oblique): Delivered onboard spacecraft Soyuz -4 16/1/69 28

On the right (alternate rhyme): to the Commander of “Soyuz -4”, 15/1/69 8:00, Moscow time.

Night and day we prepared the craft for the flight, “Soyuz” is therefore safe – this is for sure.

It is obedient in the hands of the pilot.

What had been done in these days is not a little.

And with all our heart we want to say: “We are proud of You, Šatalov!”

Let‟s prepare the Baikal…!

Let‟s our friendly tie make stronger And let many Soyuz fly in the sky!

On behalf of the Testing Team V. Naumov, Yurasov (and others) Handwritten, in blue (oblique): Received onboard spacecraft “Soyuz 4” V. Šatalov

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Classical Constellations Below two famous statues of Perseus with Medusa’s head—by Canova and on Italy 2000 by Cellini

Japan 2012 Faroes Seal 2001 Marshall Isles 2010 Exploiting his interest in stamps about space and those depicting classical mythology your editor continues a series referencing all the stamps we believe to exist in relation to the best known constellations and the classical legends related to them—using extracts and illustrations from the DK publication Universe (2005), the text of which was written by our Chairman.

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Since Aries is a zodiacal constellation there is no shortage of philatelic representation, as Harvey Duncan’s listing of June 2000 (above) shows

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On Greece 1995 , above left Jason and the sorceress Medea kill the serpent protecting the Golden Fleece and above right Jason presents the Fleece to his half-brother Pelias, who had usurped him from the throne, meeting the challenge set him in order to regain his rightful position as King.

Maldives 1974 designs are identical to Guyana 1992 In addition to those items listed by Harvey D the following Aries stamps are shown: Australia 2007 Austria 2005 Canada 2011 Czech Rep 2003 Faroes (seal) 2001 Greece 2007 Grenada 2013 Guyana 2013 India 2010 Japan 2013 (iv) Romania 2002 Romania 2011 Russia 2004 Marshall Is 2010 Sri Lanka 2007 Taiwan 2001 Ukraine 2008

In Greek mythology the constellation of Aries is associated with the golden ram of Greek mythology that rescued Phrixos and Helle on orders from Hermes, taking him to the land of Colchis.

Phrixos and Helle were the son and daughter of King Athamas and his first wife Nephele. The king's second wife, Ino, was jealous and wished to kill his children. To accomplish this, she induced a famine in Boeotia, then falsified a message from the Oracle of Delphi that said Phrixos must be sacrificed to end the famine.

Athamas was about to sacrifice his son atop Mount Laphystium when Aries, sent by Nephele, arrived. Helle fell off Aries's back in flight and drowned in the Dardanelles, also called the Hellespont in her honour.

After arriving, Phrixos sacrificed the ram to Zeus and gave the Fleece to AeĂŤtes of Colchis, who rewarded him with an engagement to his daughter Chalciope. AeĂŤtes hung its skin in a sacred place where it became known as the Golden Fleece and was guarded by a dragon. In a later myth, this Golden Fleece was stolen by Jason and the Argonauts. (Wikipedia)

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The Europa and the Bull legend on France 1999 and Bosnia & H 1997

In Greek mythology, Taurus is associated with three myths….

Principally with Zeus, who assumed the form of a magnificent white bull to abduct Europa, a legendary Phoenician princess. In illustrations of Greek mythology, only the front portion of this constellation are depicted; this was sometimes explained as Taurus being partly submerged as he carried Europa out to sea. A second Greek myth portrays Taurus as Io, a mistress of Zeus. To hide his lover from his wife Hera, Zeus changed Io into the form of a heifer Taurus is also identified by some sources with the myth of the Cretan Bull, one of The Twelve Labours of Heracles, illustrated right.

The Heraclean conflict on Monaco 1984 and Greece 1970

Taurus, also being a Zodiacal constellation will have as many stamps for it as there in the sets for Aries on the previous pages, but space (and reason) doesn’t permit them all to be shown here. I’m sure you’ve got the idea.

Harvey’s listing June 2000 right is a good starting point.

What other constellations can you spot in this glorious Ciskei 1986 set ?

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Doctor n Space

: Soviets Continued

Valery Polyakov The cosmonaut medic who became the most experienced space vet ever !

Valeri Vladimirovich Polyakov (born Valeri Ivanovich Korshunov on April 27, 1942) is a Russian former cosmonaut.

He is the holder of the record for the longest single spaceflight in human history, staying aboard the Mir space station for more than 14 months (437 days 18 hours) during one trip. His combined space experience is more than 22 months.

Selected as a cosmonaut in 1972, Polyakov made his first flight into space aboard Soyuz TM-6 in 1988. He returned to Earth 240 days later aboard TM-7. Polyakov completed his second flight into space in 1994–1995, spending 437 days in space between launching on Soyuz TM-18 and landing on TM-20, setting the record for the longest time continuously spent in space by an individual in human history.

(Wikipedia) Poliakov was inspired by the original space doctor Boris Yegorov and enrolled in the Sechenov 1st Moscow Medical Institute in 1960 and decided to devote himself to space medicine. However his career ambitions were at first stifled by postings to hospital specialising in Parasitology and in Polyakov was later to admit to “something of a Social Hygiene. However by the end of the 1970s he was on disappointment” when he found adapting to space weightlessness fairly easy and he put this down to his good the periphery of the role he sought. medical and biological preparation.

Working under the direction of eminent space medicine specialist N.N.Gurovski, Polyakov did post-graduate work writing a thesis on “The Features of Protein Metabolism in the Extreme Conditions of Spaceflight”. He was selected to join the cosmonaut team in 1972 to train as a practising physician/surgeon in orbit and was promoted to lead a team of such specialists who were preparing cosmonauts for flight. A second role came as back up to Dr Oleg Atkov on Soyuz T-10 in February 1984 though some reports have it he was originally the first choice.

Polyakov was again displaced this time from the TM-4 flight (late 1987) because the authorities wanted to blood a new pilot (in Levchenko) but he finally made it into space as part of the Soviet Afghan mission to Mir—TM 6 launched prematurely in April 1988 in a group which (unusually) contained no flight engineer but two cosmonaut researchers, the other being the Afghan Abdul Mohmand.

When Lyakhov and Mohmand returned to Earth, Polyakov remained on Mir with Titov and Manarov (of TM-4 launched in December 1987) and the expanded resident crew were joined in November 1988 by the TM-7 visitors in the shape of Volkov, Krikalev and spationaute J-L Chretien. Medical and biological experiments were prominent early in their research programme with the Frenchman monitoring his own cardiac activity using the echograph ultrasound instrument and undergoing a further series of tests under the codename Medilab.

On his return to earth eight months after being launched Polyakov was lauded with honours and returned to his work being promoted to Deputy Director of the Institute of Medical-Biological Problems, (see article by Bert van Eijck in Orbit #28) in which post he had responsibility for the medical testing parts of the selection of future cosmonauts for several years: see the early stamps in the flight sequence Dr Polyakov had ensured considerable discomfort to donate of a typical Soviet flight on page 15 of this edition, showing bone marrow before the flight for later comparison as had various types of testing equipment that he was involved his back up Dr Gherman Arzamazov (who did not fly at all with in monitoring cosmonauts’ fitness for flight. after questioning Polyakov’s right to a second flight rather than him, and was then quietly dropped from the team of Although described in 1990 as a “former cosmonaut” Polyakov undertook a second long stay stay in space when cosmonauts training to fly).

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Lollinin card

Lollini postcard showing the TM 6 crew with Mohmand on the left of commander Vladimir Lyakhov.

Below the mission patch for TM-18 and Polyakov’s amusing personal patch depicting him as an elderly medic which styles him “врач (vratch = Doctor) cosmonaut from Tula” his home area.

On January 9th, 1995 Polyakov broke the duration record for a single space flight (held by Titov and Manarov Dec 1987-88) and in February he witnessed the historic first rendezvous of Mir with a shuttle (Discovery) in a photo taken from the shuttle used in the design of this 1998 issue from Palau.

he was launched on Soyuz TM-18 (for Expedition #15) with Afanasyev and Usachev with the express intention of remaining in space for well over 400 days. The main thrust of this mission for him to make medical studies of himself and his adaptation to weightlessness during the longest spell ever planned for one man.

Then as the flight progressed with a fresh crew of Malenchenko and Musabayev, arriving on TM-19 in early July medical experiments continued, including the use of Austrian made equipment to determine psycho-physiological reactions of cosmonauts at work. In October TM-20 brought Viktorenko, Merbold and Kondakova to Mir, the first and third of whom remained as Polyakov’s third set of partners.

(At the launch of this flight two of those present were American doctors Norman Thagard and Bonnie Dunbar, themselves in training for spells on Mir: see Orbit 100 for Then on 22nd March Polyakov’s spell in space came to an details.) end with a new crew including American doctor Thagard taking over, in a sense, as resident Mir-medic. Polyakov’s 35

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flight had lasted from early January 1994 until late March of the following year, taking his combined total of flight days to nearly 700.

Wikipedia provides the following update on Polyakov’s status. He retired from his position as a cosmonaut in June 1995, then participated in experiment SFINCSS-99 (Simulation of Flight of International Crew on Space Station) in 1999 and he is currently the Deputy Director of the Ministry of Public Health in Moscow, where he oversees the medical aspects of long-duration space missions. He is a member of the Russian Chief Medical Commission, participating in the qualification and selection of cosmonauts.

Since returning from space, Polyakov has remained active in the discipline of international spaceflight, becoming a "cosmonaut-investigator" for the United States, Austria, Germany, and France during their respective space science missions to the Mir space station.

Other Soyuz Medics The number of shuttle flights (135) is comparable to the number of Soyuz launches since 1970, (120) but whilst there were 54 flight instances of doctors on shuttles the Soyuz number is considerably smaller— although Polyakov’s two “instances” are immense (!) - for which there are obvious reasons. The first concerns the number of seats on a Soyuz ferry which could possibly be made available for “cosmonaut researchers”, the Russian equivalent of “mission or payload specialists”. The maximum size of a Soyuz crew is 3, the typical number of astronauts on a shuttle 7, providing opportunities for a variety of specialist fliers.

Secondly, the third seat on a Soyuz flight to a space station was frequently given to “paying guests” for political or financial reasons and such cosmonauts were unlikely to be medically trained. A number of medics did fly on Soyuz in the third seat but few of them were Russians most American as explained in the article in our last edition. A handful of others were European, the best known of these represented on stamps being spationaute Claudie André-Deshays aka Haigneré.

Her first flight came in August 1996 as part of the TM-24 crew. During 16 days on Mir she carried out biological and medical experiments Born in Le Creusot, France, she studied medicine at the Faculté de Médecine (Paris-Cochin) and Faculté des Sciences (Paris-VII). She went on to obtain certificates in biology and sports medicine (1981), aviation and space medicine (1982), and rheumatology (1984). In 1986 she received a diploma in the biomechanics and physiology of movement.

She completed her PhD

Cover marking the first rendezvous of shuttle and MIR, with Polyakov’s name given bottom left

thesis in neuroscience in 1992. (Wikipedia).

A second short duration flight came in October 2001 on TM-33 when, now married to a flown French spationaute Claudie Haigneré spent a further 10 days but now on the ISS. The next doctor in space was fellow ESA astronaut André Kuipers—he received a medical degree from the University of Amsterdam in 1987— who became the second Dutch citizen via the launch of Soyuz TMA-4 on 19 April 2004 returning returned to Earth aboard Soyuz TMA-3 11 days later.

Kuipers was the first Dutch astronaut to return to space. launched to space on 21 December 2011 in TMA3-0M and returned to Earth on 1 July 2012.

The Malayasian guest cosmonaut on Soyuz TMA 11 for ten days in October 2007 Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor was an orthopaedic surgeon at the Universiti Kebangsaan. He performed experiments on board the International Space Station relating to the characteristics and growth of liver cancer and leukemia cells, the crystallisation of various proteins and microbes in space.

The experiments relating to liver cancer, leukemia cells and microbes will benefit general science and medical research, while the experiments relating to the crystallisation of proteins, lipases in this case, will directly benefit local industries In 1998, Sheikh Muszaphar had worked at Hospital Seremban, followed by a move to Kuala Lumpur General Hospital in 1999, and was on staff at Hospital Selayang from 2000 through 2001.

He graduated from Eiko high school, Kamakura, in 1983; received a Doctorate in Medicine from the University of Tokyo in 1989,

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and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Medical Science from the same school in 2000. (Wikipedia)

Satoshi Furukawa the Japanese astronaut who flew on TMA02 in June 2011 graduated from Eiko high school, Kamakura, in 1983; received a Doctorate in Medicine from the University of Tokyo in 1989, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Medical Science from the same school in 2000.

From 1989 to 1999, Furukawa worked in the Department of Surgery at the University of Tokyo, as well as the Department of Anaesthesiology at JR Tokyo General Hospital, the Department of Surgery at Ibaraki Prefectural Central Hospital and at Sakuragaoka Hospital.

Right— launch cover autographed (l-r) by the crew: Volkov, Fossum and Furukawa.

NASA Doctor Astronauts on Soyuz As detailed in our last issue (p21ff) the following NASA astronauts have been launched to space stations on Soviet ferries: Norman Thagard, Thomas Marshburn and Michael Barratt

So far none of the flown Chinese astronauts appears to have been medically qualified.

STAMP Magazine for March celebrates astro issues Two articles by prolific philatelic journalist, John Winchester, an email acquaintance of your Editor, who writes on a huge variety of topics with at least one feature every month will be of interest to readers of this very popular and highly regarded British glossy, edited by Guy Thomas of MyTimeMedia.

Firstly over seven pages Winchester reviews Pioneers of Rocket Mail mentioning early efforts from Chinese and Indian experimenters through Congreve and touches on rocket theorists like Tsiolkovski and Goddard. Then the article devotes generous space to telling the general reader about the exploits of Schmiedl, Tiling, Zucker, Stephen Smith, Roberti, Young, Kessler, and the Cuban experience. Your editor is hopeful of reprinting in Orbit format the whole article later in the year.

A second half page article finds Winchester discussing the curious 1973 West Germany issue for Copernicus shown much enlarged right. He points out various design errors in that in this version of the Polish scientist’s heliocentric solar system Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn is missing and another planet inhabits the same orbit as Earth (and its Moon). He concludes by pointing out that Copernicus’s own drawing was rather more accurate (as I imagine you know) !

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F.I.P Section for Astrophilately Report on Activities from April 2013 till December 2013.

(Note: Because of the previous report of the Section to the FIP Congress was submitted on March 29, 2013, the current report is covered the period from April 2013 till December 2013.)

The most regular activity of the Commission has been given by the continuous correspondence from worldwide collectors of Astrophilately consulting about different chapters of this exciting field of collecting.

The Section’s Bureau.

The Bureau continued to work in its original composition as elected in 2012 including 2 members invited by the Section’s Chairman.

The Bureau consists of 7 members; Chairman - Igor Rodin (Russia); Secretary – Jaromir Matejka (Austria); Bureau member (FEPA) – Julius Cacka (Czech Republic); Bureau member (FIAP) – Carol Cheung (Hong Kong); Bureau member (FIAF) – Avedis Ketchian (Argentina); Bureau member (invited) - Charles Bromser (Austria) Bureau member (invited) - Dr. Reuben Ramkissoon (USA)

Non-competitive exhibitions to promote Astrophilately.

On April 14, Igor Rodin gave a lecture on Astrophilately titled "From the History of Soviet/Russian Space Mail”. The translation of the lecture from English into German was made by Jürgen Esders.

The average age of the visitors was considerably lower than the age bracket usually observed on stamp exhibitions.

“Astrophilately is a young hobby”, Weltraum Philatelie President Florian Noller observed. Many of the German exhibits had been shown for the first time, or after a long period of inactivity.

2) The annual assembly of Weltraum Philatelie took place at Garching near München, during the Garching Space Days. The local organizers had set up a promotional space stamp and cover exhibition; one of the astronauts of STS-55, German payload specialist Ulrich Walter, was been invited for a presentation.

Astrophilately in Belgium.

A number of Belgium Astro exhibits were demonstrated in noncompetitive class in the frames of the “FILA NOVUS PORTUS 2013” exhibition in Nieuwpoort on 22 -23 June, 2013.

Astrophilately in Italy.

In the frames of the 8th International Astronautics Academy Symposium on the Future of Space Exploration: Towards the Stars, there was non-competitive exhibition devoted to the 50th anniversary of Valentina Tereskova’s flight in Turin, Italy on July 03-05, 2013.

The same exhibits were demonstrated in the frames of VeronaFil in November 2013.

Astrophilately in Spain.

From 15 May to 31 August Mr. Esteban’s exhibit commemorating the 40th anniversary of Skylab launch was shown in the Centre of Training and Visitors (CEV) from Robledo de Chavela.

Several Spanish Astrophilately exhibits took part in National exhibitions: EXFILNA 2013 León, from 20 to 28 September; JUVENIA 2013 Alicante, from 14 to 20 October; “Exfilpalma 2013” Palma de Mallorca from 9 to 15 September 2 Astro exhibits were demonstrated at the Russian-Spain joint philatelic exhibition in the Russian Centre of Science and Culture in Madrid in October.

In the Lunar Museum, Fresnedillas de la Oliva (Madrid) there is a permanent Astrophilatelic Exhibition prepared by José Grandela.

Astrophilately in Switzerland.

A number of Swiss Astro exhibits were demonstrated in competitive class in the frames of National and regional exhibitions.

Astrophilately in USA. A number of the US Astro exhibits were demonstrated in competitive class in the frames of BALPEX exhibition.

Astrophilately in Germany.

1) The „Astrophil 2013" space philately exhibition.

More than 500 visitors were attracted by the Joint GermanRussian Exhibition held in the Russian House for Science and Culture in Berlin since April 12 till April 14, 2013. The event was devoted to the 50th Anniversary of the first spaceflight of a woman cosmonaut and the 35th Anniversary of the first flight of a German national into space.

The exhibition was organized by: Chairman of the FIP Section for Astrophilately Igor Rodin (Moscow, Russia); the Federal Working Group on Space Philately (Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft „Weltraum Philatelie" e. V.) in the Federation of German Philatelists (BDPh); the Russian House for Science and Culture at Berlin; the Association of Russia/UdSSR Stamp Collectors Berlin (Verein der Briefmarkenfreunde Rußland/UdSSR Berlin); the Federation of Berlin Stamp Clubs (Verband Berliner Philatelisten-Vereine).

Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Kovalenok and German cosmonaut Sigmund Jähn, the 2 of the 4 participants of the first German space mission, were the honorary guests of the exhibition.

Promotion of Astrophilately (seminars, Before the opening ceremony, the press-conference with the conferences, interviews, lectures, etc.). cosmonauts and the organizers took place in the Russian 1) At the MonacoPhil 2013 International Philatelic exhibition, House.

It was a non-competitive international exhibition. The during the opening ceremony Chairman of the FIP Section for exhibitors from Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Astrophilately, Igor Rodin had a great Honour to hand over Monaco, Romania, Russia and Switzerland took part in the H.S.H. the Prince Albert II of Monaco a flown Space Mail letter event with 48 exhibits about the conquest of space in the for the Prince’s philatelic collection. following classes: the Honorary Class, Astrophilately, 2) Mr, Grandela conference at Centre of Training and Visitors (CEV) annex to Space Tracking Station NASA-INTA in Robledo de Thematic, Open Class and one frame exhibits.

The German Post issued a special cover and the pictorial Chavela (Madrid), 8 March, under the title “The woman in the postmarker (special official post mark) devoted to the space”. exhibition. On April 13, German Postal Service attended the show with a mobile post office.

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3) Jaromir Matejka (Austria) arranged a special temporary post office with a picture postmark in memoriam 35 years SOYUZ-28 – opening the first space post office by Georgi Grechko.

4) In June the Society of Space Philatelists (Switzerland), held the assembly with special guest, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Revin, where members became informed by PowerPoint and beamer about space activities and related astrophilatelic material.

5) German, Austrian and Czech astrophilatelists as the guests took part in the Congress of the Association of Space Explorers in Köln (Germany) June 29–July 6, 2013.

6) Mr. Grandela conference at Palacio Benacazón (Toledo) 17 September under the title “La llegada del hombre a la Luna, narrada por un protagonista” commemorating the foundation of Casa de Melilla in Toledo. Conference was offered with astrophilatelic support material.

7) On 28 September 2013in the frames of ROSSICA – 2013 International Philatelic Show held at the Congress Centre of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation (RF CCI) in Moscow Igor Rodin conducted the lecture on Astrophilately “History of Soviet-Russian Space Mail” informed

by PowerPoint and accompanied with the "Space Mail" video film made by Sergey Rodin.

8) USA, September. Sister philatelic organization, the Universal Ship Cancellation Society officers and members were invited to join the Space Unit officers and members to hear an informative space monkey and recovery ship presentation by Captain Joe Guion, U.S. Navy, Retired. Captain Guion was the Commanding Officer of USS Kiowa and responsible for the recovery of space monkeys Able and Baker in the Atlantic Ocean, May 28, 1959, at the dawn of the modern space age, and setting the stage for manned spaceflights by Project Mercury astronauts in the near future.

9) Mr. Rigo conference (in Catalan) in Ateneu Científic, Literari i Artístic de Maó (Menorca) 10 October under the title “Astrofilatèlia: aquesta estranya classe de filatèlia” inside the activities held in the exhibition “Exfilmô 2013”.

10) Mr. Grandela conference in Alicante 16 October under the title “La llegada del hombre a la Luna, narrada por un protagonista” during the exhibition Juvenia 2013.

11) Mr. Grandela conference in the public school “Rosalía de Castro”, Arganda del Rey (Madrid) 16 November under the title “Viajeros por el Espacio”.

Section’s website.

The section’s website www.astrophilatelist.com is maintained by Sergey Rodin. The site has various database for the Section as well as current items regarding missions and associated philately. The Bureau member Charles Bromser (Australia) checks and reviews the website.

Astrophilately in Internet.

1) Belgium. The Belgian Philatelic Society Cosmos: www.bfvcosmos.be 2) France. ASSOCIATION ASTROPHILATELIQUE DE FRANCE: http://aaf.jimdo.com/ 3) Germany. The website of Weltraum Philatelie: http:// www.weltraumphilatelie.de 4) Italy, Italian Astrophilately Society: http://www.asitaf.it/ asitaf/

5) The Netherlands, Ruimtevaart Filatelie Club Nederland: http://www.nedvision.nl/thematische-filatelie/rfc/index1.html 6) Switzerland, Gesellschaft der Weltraum Philatelisten (GWP): http://www.g-w-p.ch/ 7) The UK, the Astro Space Stamp Society: http:// www.astrospacestampsociety.com/ 8) The USA, Space Unit: www.space-unit.com/ Astrophilately Literature.

Periodicals (2013).

1) Joint membership magazine for Germany, Switzerland, Austria: Astrophilatelists split up again The fusion of the magazines of three German speaking astrophilatelic organizations in Germany, Switzerland and Austria since 2009 has ended in 2013 and early 2014. In spring 2013, the Swiss association told Weltraum Philatelie they wish to continue on their own. In early 2014, Weltraum Philatelie ended the co-operation with the Austrian association. Four annual issues had being published, usually more than 100 pages thick, providing members with solid background information on space flight and astrophilately.

2) Belgium. The “Cosmos Express” bulletin is published 4 times a year by Belgian Astrophilatelic Society – BFV Cosmos, a copy in Dutch for Flemish and Dutch members and a copy in English for foreign members.

3) China. The “Space Philately” magazine is published in Chinese

by China Space Philately Fraternity.

4) Czech Republic. The “Kosmos” bulletin in Czech is published 4 times a year (A5 format, 52 pages, color cover).

5) France. Bulletin “The Cosmophil” is published in French every 3 months by Association Astrophilatelique de France.

6) Great Britain. The “Orbit” journal is published 4 times a year by the Astro Space Stamp Society.

7) Italy. AS.IT.AF. issues the quarterly Newsletter “AD*ASTRA” in Italian and English.

8) The Netherlands. The “Ruimtevaart Filatelie Club Nederland” (RFC Nederland) (= Dutch Space Travel Philatelic Association) publishes its quarterly magazine “Nieuwsbrief” (each issue: 16 pages, full colour, size A4, in Dutch).

9) Switzerland. The “Space Phil News” quarterly magazine is issued especially for the members of the Swiss Space Philatelic Society.

10) USA. The Astrophile – Journal of Astrophilately is published

by Space Unit with full colour reproductions of covers and their illustrations.

The Articles to promote Astrophilately.

The following Section’s delegates and astro-collectors are the most active to publish Astrophilatelic material in Philatelic and non-philatelic mass-media: Jaromir Matejka from Austria; Julius Cacka from Czech Republic; Jürgen Esders and Florian Noller from Germany; Carol Cheung from Hong Kong; Umberto Cavallaro from Italy; Antoni Rigo, José Grandela, Esteban de la Osada from Spain, Respectfully submitted,

Igor RODIN Chairman of the 30 January 2014.

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Constellation Minisheets from Japan in 2012 and 2013 As intimated in previous issues, Japan has produced four of these beautiful blue and silver sheets containing 10 self-adhesives—in 2011, 2012 and twice last year.

Issue no 2 (left) shows Top row (l-r) Capricornus Aquarius Pisces Second row Cassiopeia Pegasus Andromeda Third row (l-r) Perseus Cepheus Cetus Fourth row singleton Ikari-boshi (anchor) Japanese asterism

Issue no 3, the first of two in 2013 shows Top row (l-r) Cancer Leo Virgo Second row Ursa Ma Ursa Mi Bootes Third Corvus Corona Borealis Canes Venatici Fourth row singleton The Big Dipper

One stamp enlarged from the first issue (2011) showing Ophiuchus and Serpens 40