Orbit issue 97 (March 2013)

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Editorial

ISSN 0953 1599 THE JOURNAL OF THE ASTRO SPACE STAMP SOCIETY Issue No 97 March 2013

Our Society in Good Shape ?

Patron:

Once again, here is an issue packed with superb articles covering a variety of space themed topics, some of which by happenstance link nicely together like Ian Ridpath’s cover story on aurorae and Jim Reichman’s article on ARAKS. There are also specialist features on postmarks from Igor Rodin and Jim Reichman and a lovely article from Don Hillger and Garry Toth on the beauty of our home planet as shown on stamps. The short series of articles celebrating our 25 years also continues.

Cosmonaut Georgi Grechko, Hero of the Soviet Union

COMMITTEE Chairman Ian Ridpath, 48 Otho Court, Brentford, Middlesex, TW8 8PY (E-mail : ian@ianridpath.com) Chairman Emeritus : Margaret Morris, 55 Canniesburn Drive, Bearsden, Glasgow, Scotland G61 1RX (E-mail: mmorris671@aol.com)

Hon. Secretary:

However may I particularly draw your attention to a more prosaic item—the statement of our Income and Expenditure for the past year on page 28.

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)

From this you will see that we are quite solvent but losing money because of the high costs of printing and postage in particular. Royal Mail’s increase in tariffs in 2012 hit us badly. If we continue to erode our bank balance to subvent the publication of Orbit, without increasing subscriptions (which can be counterproductive) in the way we appear to have been doing then our future is not assured.

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

What would help ? Can you let us know what it would mean to you to have Orbit delivered electronically, i.e. either on CDRom with lighter postage costs or simply via download code from our website.

At the moment these possibilities are being accessed by only a handful of our membership.

Meantime my best wishes….

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

www.astrospacestampsociety.com/ Copy Deadline for the June 2013 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 2013 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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2013 - YEAR OF THE AURORA This year, the Sun is building to one of its cyclical peaks of activity, and as a result we can hope to see some of the best aurorae (aka the northern lights) for a decade. Aurorae are among the most astonishing natural phenomena. They occur when charged particles from the Sun hit the Earth’s upper atmosphere, making it glow an ethereal green and red.

Usually you have to be within the Arctic or Antarctic Circles to see aurorae, because the Earth’s magnetic field funnels the particles down into a ring around the poles. But when solar storms called coronal mass ejections (CMEs) blast storms of atomic particles towards Earth, the auroral rings can expand. On such occasions aurorae can become visible further from the poles than usual, including much of Europe and North America. CMEs follow the 11-year solar activity cycle, so there is a chance for some big ones around solar maximum and those of us who do not live inside the Arctic or Antarctic Circle may see an aurora in the next year or so.

All nations in or near the auroral zone have at some time depicted aurorae on stamps. Most recent of these were Greenland and Iceland who did so as part of their contributions to the 2012 Europa “Visit” theme.

Greenland produced two stamps, one showing icebergs and the other a colourful aurora during the great storm of October 2003, taken by local photographer John Rasmussen. http://europa-stamps.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/greenland-2012.html

Iceland’s brace of Europa stamps, designed by Elsa Nielsen, showed a geyser and an aurora. Both illustrations were broken up to form those checkered squares called QR

codes, thereby turning the pictures into an almost unrecognizable cubist fantasy. The aurora picture was taken at Lake Kýlingavatn in southern Iceland by the Dutch photographer Hugo de Wolf. http://europa-stamps.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/iceland-2012.html

Iceland takes credit for the first-ever stamp depicting an aurora, issued in 1934. It was actually a pair of stamps with different denominations and colours but the same design, of an aircraft flying over a volcanic mountain. In the sky behind the aircraft are wavy bands that might have looked to the uninitiated like smoke from the volcano, but are in fact intended to be an aurora.

Capturing the faint, mobile forms of an aurora was always difficult with traditional colour film. The first stamp that I have found bearing what appears to be a genuine photograph of an aurora, as distinct from artwork, is the one above, issued in 1991 by the Australian Antarctic Territory. Unfortunately the photographer is not credited. Does anyone know more about this stamp? http://www.ianridpath.com/stamps/AAT1991.htm Modern digital cameras have made it much easier to capture aurorae photographically. In 2008, the British Antarctic Territory showed what can be done when they produced a gallery of five colourful aurorae seen over the British Antarctic Survey’s Halley Research Station. Alas, my inquiries have failed to find who the photographers were, or when the pictures were taken.

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ORBIT See these stamps in colour at http://www.ianridpath.com/stamps/BAT2008.htm http://www.ianridpath.com/stamps/ finland2007.htm

Probably the most beautiful postal issue featuring an aurora was a 2007 sheet from Finland marking the start of the International Polar Year.

Perforations in the sheet created two overlapping stamps, one containing a green aurora arcing over a snowy landscape while the other featured a close-up of a snowflake. The aurora image was taken by Pekka Luukkola in northern Finland, and the stamp designers incorporated it into an intricate montage.

Finland scored again two years later with a magnificent trio of self-adhesive stamps depicting three multicoloured aurorae that occurred in 1999 and 2001, during the last solar maximum. http://www.ianridpath.com/stamps/finland2009.htm

I wonder what new aurora stamps we can look forward to following this year’s maximum. For more about aurorae on stamps, and aurorae in general, see my web page, where the stamps below and others can be seen in full colour Ian Ridpath Chairman, Astro Space Stamp Society

Canada 2002, China 2002, TAAF 1984, Germany 2009, Norway 2001, France 1949, USSR 1957

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IGY Cover Study Uncovers Issue Date Error by Jim Reichman series of assembly meetings of the nation-participants. The first four of these assemblies were conducted prior to the beginning of the IGY: the first in Brussels in 1953, then Rome in 1954, Brussels again in 1955, and finally Barcelona in 1956. The fifth assembly (and the subject of the special postmark and the associated commemorative covers) was very important because it was the first under which scientific results of the IGY were actually reported.

The study of Soviet cosmic philately is always interesting and never ceases to amaze me. This is not only because of the wide variety of spaceflight firsts that the Soviet philatelic issues relate to but also because there seems to be an intriguing, space-related subject to research and write about at every turn of the catalogue page.

Take, for example, the special postmark shown in Figure 1 left found while paging through V. A. Yakobs’ catalogue of special postmarks of the USSR.(i) This Moscow postmark was used to cancel covers commemorating the 5th Assembly of the Special Committee for the International Geophysical Year (CSAGI)(ii). It was used in Moscow (the city where the meeting was held) from 30 July to 9 August 1958 which were the dates of that assembly. Most of the time, cover collectors will see this postmark on specially prepared IGY-assembly covers similar to that seen in Figure 2, below.

The host organization for this IGY assembly in Moscow was the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and, more specifically within that organization, their Committee for the IGY. This committee produced special stationery items with IGY symbols to be used for that organization’s official correspondence. Two of these committee’s envelopes were used to create 5th assembly commemorative covers as seen in the cover examples found in Figure 12 and Figure 14.

5th CSAGI Assembly Commemorative Covers Because of the significance of this meeting, the host organization decided to offer commemorative philatelic covers to mark the occasion. The Soviet post office supported this effort by providing the commemorative postmark (Figure 1) and three different IGY stamps (Table 1). Although none of these assembly covers bore the name or abbreviation of the Moscow City Society of Collectors (MGOK)(iii), there is a good possibility that this collector club played a large role in preparing the commemorative covers.

The construction of these IGY assembly covers varies widely with those produced on the opening day of the meeting being the most complex. This is because these opening-day covers contain not only a stamp and one or two imprints of the special assembly postmark but also graphic and text hand-stamped overprints and even pasteon vignettes. Typically there were three types of graphic overprints and two types of text overprints but some covers also contained either one of two types of vignettes and even a third type of text overprint.

Background The International Geophysical Year (IGY) was an 18 month period from 1 July 1957 to 31 December 1958 during which many of the world’s nations conducted research of physical processes occurring in, on, and around the Earth and shared the resulting scientific information and conclusions. That period was chosen because the Sun was at its most active period (during the 11-year solar cycle) and thus having its most noticeable effects on the Earth. The study areas were quite comprehensive and included meteorology, oceanography, glaciology, as well as the Earth’s magnetism, gravity, and seismic activities. The upper atmosphere phenomena studies included the aurora, ionosphere, meteors, and even cosmic rays.

Graphic Cachets and Vignettes The three graphic, hand-stamped cachets described below were applied using either black or violet ink. The paste-on vignettes were in colour.

The overall programme and methodologies for conducting this research were orchestrated by the CSAGI. The formal planning for these activities were coordinated through a 5

Assembly Cachet and Vignettes: The image in the largest of the graphic cachets (Figure 3 right) commemorates the assembly and the design replicates many of the assembly symbolics from the special postmark.

This design includes a portion of the limb of the Earth with lines of meridian, an orbit circling the Earth with a spherical

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satellite in that orbit, an outline or silhouette of the M. V. Lomonosov University (where the assembly was held), the city name “Moscow” in French, the year of the assembly 1958, and the abbreviation “VCSAGI”. That abbreviation starts with the Roman numeral “V” since this was the 5 th assembly and is followed by CSAGI, the abbreviation of the special IGY committee name.

Fig 6 VCSAGI Vignette Sticker #1

Fig 7 Ditto #2

Two types of colour, paste-on vignettes (Figure 6 and Figure 7) were seen with this same assembly cachet design.

The commemorative cover in Figure 12 has one of these vignettes applied to it.

IGY Cachet: The next largest graphic cachet (Figure 4 right) includes the IGY logo inside a double-outlined, octagon figure. Also in this cachet are the words “International Geophysical Year” in French (at the top) and Russian (at the bottom).

The IGY year boundaries, 1957 and 1958, are on either side of the IGY logo.

IGY Logo Cachet: The smallest graphic cachet (Figure 5 right) is the IGY logo, i.e., a globe with lines of meridian, a single orbit circling that globe, and a small, spherical satellite in that orbit. Note that the globe is tilted showing more of the southern polar region to emphasize the IGY’s extra interest in the Antarctic region.

Assembly Special Postmark The special assembly postmark mirrors some of the design elements from those cachets and vignettes. These cancels were only officially applied to covers using black ink.

Design Elements: These are the partial meridian Earth, the view of the M. V. Lomonosov University in Moscow, and the orbit with a satellite in it. The text between the outer concentric rings reads “5th Assembly of the International Geophysical Year” in Russian.

Usage Dates: At the centre of this postmark is the calendar -date area. The date in this area was changeable. This postmark was only used at the post office from 30 July to 9 August 1958, i.e., the dates of the IGY assembly. The post office name is identified as Moscow (in French) just above the calendar-date area. This city name, by itself, would normally mean that the postmark was applied at the main

Moscow post office. However, despite the absence of a post office location modifier in the postmark design, these postmarks were only applied at the Moscow, V-234 branch post office located in the main building at the university.(i,iv) i, This branch name is confirmed in the registered-mail, hand-stamp cachet seen on the first day cover (FDC) in Figure 15.

Postmark Error: Sharp-eyed readers will note that the French abbreviation for this assembly name in this postmark is not spelled the same as in the large graphic cachet and vignettes. The postmark uses the abbreviation “VOSAGI” whereas it should read “VCSAGI”. This error was apparently not discovered until after the canceling dies were created and used on thousands of commemorative covers.

Text Overprints Collectors will also normally find between one and three hand-stamped, text-type overprints applied to the openingday, 5th Assembly commemorative covers. The most typical situation is to have the first two of these text overprints described below. As with the graphic, hand-stamp cachets, all three of these text overprints were applied using either black or violet ink.

Assembly Name Overprint: The largest of the text overprints (Figure 8 above) identifies the assembly name, the city where the meeting was held, and the meeting dates.

The upper line is in Russian while the lower line is in English.

Opening Day Overprint: The next largest of these text overprints was only applied to commemorative covers postmarked on 30 July 1958, i.e., the opening day of the assembly meeting. As can be seen in Figure 9 (above right) this overprint has two language versions of the words “First Day” on the left side of a large bracket. The upper version is in Russian and the lower version in English. To the right of the bracket is the assembly opening date, 30 July 1958.

In some respects, this overprint wording appears strange.

More typically I would expect to see a phrase similar to that in Figure 10 which reads “Day of Opening” but these IGY assembly covers did not use that phrase. Use of the term “First Day” is normally used when referring to the issue date of some philatelic product like a stamp. This situation is even stranger given this next overprint that is seen on some but not all of these IGY-assembly, opening-day covers.

First-Day-of-Issue Overprint. Perhaps the most surprising overprint to find on these IGY assembly covers is one that declares that they are first-day-of-issue covers !! See Figure 11. The overprint consists of three lines of text saying the 6

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The non-Russian catalogues are more than likely basing issue date of these stamps on the FDCs prepared and sent to collectors and dealers outside of the USSR by the Soviet export organization called International Kniga (or just Kniga, for short). See a scan of such a Kniga FDC in Figure 13 below.

same thing, i.e., “Day of Issue” in Russian (top line), English (middle line), and French (bottom line).

This overprint should only be on IGY assembly covers where the special assembly postmark was set to the date 30 July 1958 and the cover was franked with at least one of the three IGY stamps issued in July 1958. See scans of these stamps in Table 1 and examples of these first-day-of-issue covers in Figure 12 and Figure 14.

What this overprint strongly implies is that the first day of issue of these stamps was 30 July 1958. The Soviet postmark cataloguer Yakobs further claims that these commemorative stamps were issued specifically to coincide with the IGY assembly and the official, first-day-of-issue postmark for those stamps was the special IGY assembly postmark.i

Why Kniga got the date wrong, if indeed the correct issue date is 30 July, is not known. Kniga had a habit of backdating covers to meet collector and dealer requests for FDCs and used what I believe to be their own unique organizational version of the Moscow circular date stamp (CDS) to make those covers. See a close-up of this Kniga CDS postmark in Figure 13.(vi) Perhaps somewhere in this Some collectors of FDCs for these IGY stamps may be feeling after-the-fact, backdating process someone got the issue a little queasy at this point because this 30-July-1958, issue- date for these IGY stamps mixed up. date situation contradicts all of the western catalogues like Scotts, Pfau, Michel, and Winick. Those catalogues all show Additional 30 July 1958 IGY covers are shown in Figure 14 the first-day-of-issue for these stamps as 29 July 1958 (Table below and Figure 15 (top of page 8). The first is 1 below). The Russian catalogues like TsFA and Pevzner commemoratively cancelled with all the various graphic appear to be non-committal about the exact date and only cachets and text overprints while the second was state that it was during July 1958. registered and sent to an addressee in Kiev. This latter has none of the commemorative hand-stamps, not even the

Figure 14 –First-Day-of-Issue Commemorative Assembly Cover

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References: i. Yakobs, V. A., Special Postmarks of the USSR, 1922 – 1972, 1976, pp. 4849 & 364.

Ii. The committee name abbreviation comes from the French words of that name. iii. MGOK is the abbreviation from the Russian spelling of the club name.

Iv Thanks to Oleg Vaisberg for sharing cover scans and information. Oleg attended these assembly meetings and got some of his philatelic covers while there. See his emails dated 17 & 19 December 2012, Subject: “IGY Issue Date Dilemma.”

V. Scotts 2003 catalogue page 532, Pfau 1977 catalog page 4, Michel 1997 catalogue page1028, Winick 1978 catalogue page 63, Pevzner 1995 catalogue page 135, and Central Philatelic Agency (TsFA) catalogue(page number unknown) .

Vi. Reichman, James, Philatelic Study Report 2007-1, Kniga First Day Covers with Space Symbolics, 15 June 2007.

Vii. Thanks to Orfeo Durigon for sharing scans of his IGY assembly covers.

See emails dated 16 December 2012, Subject: “IGY Scans”.

Viii. The universal time date; actually 31 January in the US. Ix. Korsmo, Fae, “The Birth of the IGY”, Physics Today, July 2007 X. Petrovich, G. V., The Soviet Encyclopedia of Space Flight, 1969, p. 192.

As confirmed by one source, the hand-stamped overprints and cachets were only available to those collectors having their covers cancelled at a special postal sub-station or kiosk set up near the meeting rooms at the university. Those who went to mail letters, like this registered letter, at the regular Moscow, V-234 post office in the main university building just got the commemorative postmark.iv

ASTEROIDS

Bottom line is that I am convinced that the correct issue date for these IGY stamps was 30 July 1958 as the Yakobs catalogue states and is shown in the covers illustrating this article.(vii) Other collectors will have to make up their own minds.

Some Bits and Pieces

Support a Campaign for a Stamp for the Uganda Solar Eclipse….

The assembly attendees were, of course, not worrying about this issue but rather concentrating on the scientific findings of the first 12 months of the IGY. Many of these findings were significant including, for example, the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts around the Earth. This finding was uncovered because of another benefit of this IGY programme, i.e., it encouraged the launching of satellites by two of the participating nations. The world’s first satellite, Sputnik-1 on 4 October 1957 by the Soviet Union and the United States’ first satellite, Explorer-1, on 1 February 1958. (viii)

A correspondent of our Chairman Emeritus, Margaret Morris writes...On 3rd November 2013 a solar eclipse will be visible from Uganda. As usual I am trying very hard persuading them to issue commemorative philatelic material for this eclipse. I NEED YOUR HELP. Please write to Uganda Post at : stamps@ugapost.co.ug and ask them to issue a stamp on this occasion.

If possible ask your friends to spare a moment and send a mail. Please help.

Several important resolutions came out of this 5th assembly meeting. Because the first year was such a success, one of these resolutions was to continue the geophysical studies another year until the end of 1959. This extended IGY was called “International Geophysical Cooperation” by the US delegates (ix) and the “International Geophysical Cooperation Year” by the Soviets.(x) This finding might help explain why collectors see the years “19571959” (instead of 1957-1958) on Soviet IGY anniversary issues like the 25th IGY anniversary envelope cachet shown in Figure 16 (right).

Whether you agree with me or not about the IGY stamps’ issue date, readers will have to admit that turning those catalogue pages and trying to research the issues you find on that next page is a worthwhile endeavour and turns collectors into philatelists.

Margaret’s Slides Need a New Home Margaret is starting the New Year by taking a serious look at all the "stuff" she has accumulated. She used to give a lot of talks to astronomical and philatelic societies illustrated by slides and had an old Pradovit slide projector - built like a tank! She also finds that most societies use a digital projector, so she has been scanning in individual stamps, covers, etc., to make new-style "slides".

As a result she has a large quantity of high quality colour slides of stamps of astronomy and just wonder if anyone could make use of these. Would any member like them?

Any ideas?

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MA9—Mercury 9 15 May 1963

Above checklist extracted from Harvey Duncan’s US Manned Spaceflight checklists issued with Orbit #43 (October 1999) Left extract from The Observer’s Book of Manned Spaceflight by Reg Turnill (Warne 1972) Anniversary cover designed by Ken Woods

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The Blue Marble Image of the Earth The Blue Marble Image of the Earth taken on 7 December 1972

By Don Hillger and Garry Toth The Earth has been photographed from space for many years from numerous un-manned satellites as well as manned spacecraft.

However, it is not often that a particular image of the Earth becomes extremely popular.

Probably the most famous and single most widely-used full-disk true-colour image of the Earth is the so-called Blue Marble image.

That photograph was taken on 7 December 1972 by the crew of Apollo-17 as they made their way to the moon. The sun was behind the observer and camera and so fully illuminated the Earth.

December 2012 marked the 40th anniversary of the taking of that photograph!

Many other full-disk images of the Earth can be found, but they are not nearly as common as the Blue Marble image.

Full-disk images are routinely available from numerous weather/environmental-observing satellites in geostationary orbit. While those images are taken from an altitude of 35,000 km, the Blue Marble photo was taken from farther away, at 45,000 km.

For reference, the original Blue Marble image is shown above. The postage stamps and other postal items of this article can be compared to it. The image is centred over the southern part of Africa. Except for brown and slightly-green land features, the tones are mostly blue, and thus the name given to this image. Identifying features in the image are the cloud-free Saharan Desert and Arabian Peninsula in the north. South of that, patchy clouds cover equatorial Africa, and still farther south a large frontal system of thick white clouds, visible as an inverted “comma”, creates a distinguishing feature that is immediately noticeable even on small renditions of the Blue Marble image. At the bottom of the image, Antarctica appears as mostly white, a combination of snow and ice surfaces and clouds, fully lit at what is nearly the peak of the Southern Hemisphere summer.

The Blue Marble image can be found on a large number of postal items. Aside from the beauty of the image, another reason for this is probably that the image is in the public domain. Some postal items reproduce it more or less faithfully while others, as will be seen, alter it in various ways. In some cases the colours have been changed or the image has been cropped from the original full-disk version.

Or more importantly, in some reproductions the Blue Marble images have been rotated, or flipped, or both, when compared to the standard orientation with North on top.

The rotated and flipped images can be harder to identify, though the big white comma cloud generally stands out. Its shape is useful to guide the transformations that flip and/or rotate an image on a stamp to the standard orientation.

More than 50 postal items that include the Blue Marble image have been found, though some are simply postal derivatives such as FDCs and other covers. In this article, only the postal items with the best Blue Marble images are shown.

All known Blue Marble items including those with small or difficult-to-interpret images can be found in the authors’ website as noted at the end of this article.

The following sections will cover the Blue Marble images as found on different types of postal items, starting with stamps and sheets, and later other postal items.

Blue Marble images on stamps and sheets Clear Blue Marble images are found on many postage stamps, though some of them are rotated, flipped, or both.

When that is the case, both versions are shown below. This facilitates easier comparison with the original Blue Marble image.

In 1998 Argentina issued a stamp (Scott 1989, Michel 2400) to publicize the protection of the Earth’s ozone layer. It includes a vertically-flipped Blue Marble image.

Austria’s orange and blue “Fire and Earth” stamp (Scott 2083, Michel 2635) from 2007 was issued for the Lower Austrian Provincial Exhibition.

The fire and Earth elements characterize the life and resources of the region known as the Mostviertel – fire as necessary for working iron in the forge, Earth as the fertile soil for 10

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thousands of pear trees.

The blue (Earth) part is appropriately the Blue Marble image.

France issued a stamp (Scott 3500c, Michel 4471) in 2008 with the Blue Marble image in standard orientation, along with eight of the Galileo-series global positioning system (GPS) satellites. The stamp was part of a sheet of four stamps, but only this stamp includes the Blue Marble image.

Similarly, Guinea Republic issued an environmental-themed stamp (Michel 5117) in 2007, with the Blue Marble image in proper orientation behind an image of Leonardo DiCaprio, a prominent actor who has done some work related to the environment.

Two stamps from Guinea-Bissau show the Blue Marble image. One (Michel 3327 from 2007) shows a partial Blue Marble image behind astronaut John Glenn and his Mercury -6 capsule. The other (Michel 4496 from 2009) shows a partial Blue Marge image behind the Japanese Akari (AstroF) astronomical satellite.

Indonesia issued an environmental-theme stamp (Scott 2239b, Michel 2827) in 2010 with the Blue Marble image.

Kazakhstan issued a stamp (Scott 429, Michel 436) with the Blue Marble image beneath large yellow arrows. The stamp marks the United Nations International Ministerial Conference of Landlocked and Transit Developing Countries in Almaty in 2003.

A stamp from Palau (Scott 479p, Michel 1418) issued in 1999 has the Blue Marble image behind a picture of Denis Hayes, an environmental activist and proponent of solar power. Poland’s Europa stamp (Scott 3038, Michel 3331) issued in 1991 has a Blue Marble image which emphasizes the blue tones and is shown behind an image of the Russian ARCAD-3 satellite.

Poland’s Europa stamp (Scott 3578, Michel 3886) for 2001 has the Blue Marble image as the Earth inside a water drop.

The stamp is also shown rotated 90° right for the standard Earth orientation.

A stamp from Portugal (Scott 2474, Michel 2577) issued in 2001 has the Blue Marble image slightly cut off, with the remainder of the Earth on the next stamp to the right. The stamp celebrates the 500th anniversary of the birth of the mathematician and geographer Pedro Nunes. Qatar’s Blue Marble image is on a stamp (Scott 947, Michel 1181) issued in 2001 featuring Qatar Petroleum, which is responsible for all oil and gas industry processes in Qatar.

In 2009 St. Thomas and Prince used a space theme on its two Blue Marble stamps (Michel 4137 and Michel 4138, from a sheet of four stamps). The first stamp also shows the Russian Lunokhod-1 lunar rover, while the other one shows the Apollo-15 Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV). While the first stamp is in proper orientation, the latter stamp is rotated to the left for standard Earth orientation. In both cases only a part of the full image has been used.

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This Turkish stamp (Scott 2785, Michel 3251) from 2001 shows Turksat-2A and its launch rocket in addition to a partial (but nearly-complete) Blue Marble image. The image is also shown rotated to the right and flipped vertically for standard Earth orientation.

The United Nations issued a set of blocks of four stamps from New York (Scott 650a, Michel 671-674), Geneva (Scott 254a, Michel 251-254), and Vienna (Scott 173a, Michel 170173) in 1994. The blocks have similar designs. In each case the Blue Marble image is in the centre of the block, with one quarter on each of the four stamps. This set was issued to mark the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR). Only the New York block is shown here.

The lines or cracks across the Blue Marble image symbolically represent the disaster theme.

emphasis on green tones than the original.

The surrounding stamps feature four different un-manned satellites.

Blue Marble images on other postal items The Blue Marble image has also appeared on several other types of postal items. The first one shown is a postal card from Poland issued in 1996, with the Blue Marble image on the printed stamp. The card was issued for World Telecommunications Day.

A souvenir sheet of one stamp from South Africa (Scott 1468, Michel BL129) shown below right was issued with a partial Blue Marble image on the stamp and a second partial image in the right margin. In that latter image, the inverted white comma cloud near South Africa is not visible due to the shading and the other design elements that lie atop the bottom part of the image. The other clouds that can be clearly seen match those in the Blue Marble image. The sheet was issued for the 2011 International Astronomical Congress and also shows the South African amateur-built Sumbandila satellite in the upper margin of the sheet.

Djibouti has the Blue Marble image nearly centred on a block of four stamps from a sheet of nine stamps (e-f and h-i stamps in sheet, no catalogue numbers known) issued in 2010. In this case the Blue Marble image has more 12

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Another postal card from Poland, issued in 2003, has a partial Blue Marble image in the cachet. This card, like the previous one, was issued for World Telecommunication Day. A postal cover from Italy dated 2011 has the Blue Marble image in the cachet. The cover is for the inauguration of the Climate Museum in Cisternino, Italy's first museum dedicated to climatology and meteorology. Note also that the special cancel attempts to show the Blue Marble image in a black and white drawing, with the outline of the comma cloud barely discernible.

The cachet on the above stamped envelope issued by Romania in 1998 shows the Blue Marble image both as a smaller image in the printed stamp and a larger image in the cachet. However, the reproduction in the cachet has an emphasis on much darker colours, so that the image is not easily recognized as the Blue Marble. The theme of the cover relates the “health of the planet” to the “security of life”.

Finally, a booklet cover from Poland (Scott 3762, Michel 4162-4165) issued in 2001 has a nice reproduction of the Blue Marble image that is properly oriented with the booklet as shown.

The four different stamps in the booklet have a History of the Earth theme.

A stamped card from Portugal (Scott 2415, Michel 2497) shown right dated 2001 has the Blue Marble image in the cachet, but it needs to be flipped vertically for the standard Earth orientation. In addition, the underlying geography has been changed: the clouds are clearly those of the Blue Marble image, but Europe has replaced Africa as the principal geographical reference in the centre of the image. The stamp was issued with the theme “preserving the environment is in our hands”. The stamp shows a painted Earth and is one of three issued for winners of a children’s stamp design contest. This stamped card is not a maxicard, since it was not canceled on the issue date of the stamp; rather, it was issued for a Philately and Collectors Association Fair.

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Blue Marble : Additional online information

Large astrophilatelic show to be held in Berlin next month Cosmic Mail, moon-flown covers and two cosmonauts Highly-prized exhibits with dozens of space-flown covers will be the focus of a high level astrophilatelic show entitled „Astrophil 2013“ in Berlin this Spring. Covers flown to space stations Salyut 6, Salyut 7, MIR and the International Space Station will be on display, as well as philatelic envelopes carried to the Moon by Apollo 11, 13, 14 and 15.

And that's not all! Two cosmonauts will give presentations during the show: Russian veteran Vladimir Kovalyonok and the first German cosmonaut Sigmund Jähn will also be signing autographs.

“Astrophil 2013 – Joint German-Russian exhibition on space philately” commemorates the 50th anniversary of the first spaceflight undertaken by a woman cosmonaut, and the 35th anniversary of the first flight of a German national into space. The show takes place from to 12 to 14 April 2013 in the Russian House for Science and Culture in Berlin.

First astrophilatelic show in Germany for years In addition to world-class standard exhibits owned the President of the FIP Section on Astrophilately, Igor Rodin from Moscow, and the equally exclusive “Cosmic Mail” collection owned by Austrian Walter M. Hopferwieser, a total of 30 exhibits from Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Monaco, Romania and Russia will be on display. The exhibits will cover the whole range of collection types: astrophilatelic exhibits as well as thematic exhibits or Open Class collections. “We are proud to be able to come to Berlin and present such a wide range of specimens from our collections. This is the first ‘space-only’ stamp exhibition in Germany for ages”, says Florian Noller, President of the Working Group on Space Philately (Bundesarbeits-gemeinschaft Weltraum Philatelie e. V.)

A checklist of postal items showing the Blue Marble image is available at http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/dev/hillger/ satellite-images.htm, with the Blue Marble items in a separate section from the rest of the satellite images.

More than 50 items are listed from more than 20 countries.

The authors would like to hear from anyone who knows of additional reproductions of the Blue Marble image on postal items. The authors continually update the online details as new information is received.

E-mail correspondence with the authors is welcomed.

Biographical notes The authors have researched and written extensively on the subjects of weather, climate, and un-manned satellites on stamps and covers. See http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ dev/hillger/stamp-articles.htm Don Hillger, PhD, is a research meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and holds a cooperative position at Colorado State University.

Send correspondence to don.hillger@colostate.edu Garry Toth, MSc, now retired, worked many years at the Meteorological Service of Canada. Send correspondence to gmt.varia@gmail.com two stamp clubs are organising a 'swap shop' for space collectors where they will be able to swap, buy and/or sell space stamps and covers, or just chat about their hobby.

Fascinating events to accompany the show The Federal Working Group on Space Philately (Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft „Weltraum Philatelie“ e. V.) in the Federation of German Philatelists (BDPh)is hosting the exhibition jointly with the President of the FIP Section on Astrophilately, Igor Rodin from Moscow. The Federation of Berlin Stamp Clubs (Verband Berliner Philatelisten-Vereine), the Association of Russia/ UdSSR Stamp Collectors Berlin (Verein der Briefmarkenfreunde Rußland/UdSSR Berlin) and the Russian House of Science and Culture are also partners in the ambitious endeavour, which takes place on the „Day of Cosmonautics“, the annual celebration of the very first manned space flight which took place in 1961.

Mobile Post Office carrying pictorial postmarks, commemorative covers and more On 13 April, the German Postal Service will also be attending the show with a mobile Post Office. The Post Office will carry a pictorial postmark commemorating the 50th anniversary of the first spaceflight undertaken by a woman - Valentina Tereshkova accompanied by an official printed cover and a personalised stamp.

Postmark permit meter slogan cancellations commemorating cosmonauts Kovalyonok and Jähn as well as stamps issued by private postal companies will also be available from the club. The

The swap shop will take place on Saturday morning In the afternoon, cosmonauts Kovalyonok and Jähn will be sharing memories of their joint “Intercosmos” space flight on Salyut 6, followed by round table talk about the future of manned space exploration. An autograph-signing session will conclude the afternoon.

Sunday is dedicated exclusively to astrophilately. The President of the FIP (International Philatelic Federation) Section on Astrophilately, Igor Rodin, will chair a seminar on how to put together an astrophilatelic collection. On this occasion, Rodin will share a video on space-flown mail produced onboard space station MIR. Walter M. Hopferwieser from Salzburg will then share his latest research on Cosmic Mail. Hopferwieser, a renowned official expert on Cosmic Mail, is soon to publish a new catalogue on the topic.

See Websites: http://www.weltraumphilatelie.de , http:// www.astrophilatelist Report by Jűrgen P. Esders

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Mars A Second Earth?

their permanent home. They would not only have to build living quarters, but a whole new life, says the scientist.

by Bert van Eijck Can you imagine it an astronaut with fear of heights?

Question: What about food, fuel and housing, not to mention water and oxygen? These are not minor details that need refining, they are colossal hurdles. But there are solutions, as ‘t Hooft explains. Solar panels could generate energy, water can be gleaned from Martian permafrost and CO2 in the atmosphere used as a source of oxygen. Plants growing in greenhouses would provide food and the astronauts would build their own prefab modular capsules.

“While the first colonists would have to be vegetarians, cultivating chicken and fish could be done at a later stage”, the scientist adds.

Yes, it’s true! André Kuipers (b.1958), the Dutch astronaut who lived for six months on the International Space Statio 400 kilometres above Earth, says: “A small rocky slope near an abyss, I will not think of it, it’s scary. But in a plane I have no fear, even as a parachutist. In space I never was anguish.”

His remarks come from an interview in the Dutch national newspaper ‘de Volkskrant’ (The Peoples’ Paper). Looking into the future he said: “In 25 years the first men already are on Mars. It is naïve to think mankind will forever stay on planet Earth. You even can say space-survey is a biological necessity. Staying on one spot, like the panda in a bamboo forest, you are doomed to become extinct. From the evolutionary point of view it is logical to start a colony on Mars, the Moon or elsewhere in the universe.”

In the meantime, let us return to Mother Earth and to André Kuipers. Half a year after his second spaceflight three books (in Dutch) were issued to commemorate his achievement in the same week.. One: a photobook of his spaceflight, called Expeditie 30/31, publisher Carrera (€24.90). Two: a childrens’ book: Andre’, little astronaut with illustrations from Natascha Stenvert, publisher Moon (€13.

95). Three: Dreamflight, the story of Andre’ Kuipers by Sander Koenen, publisher National Geographic (€ 19.90).

Harvey’s Collection for Sale on 14th March

Nobel-Prize winning Dutch scientist Gerard ‘t Hooft agrees.

He thinks people could be living on Mars in ten years’ time. ‘t Hooft, professor in theoretical physics at Utrecht University, says: “In principle, it is technologically possible.

We know that we can get people there and that we can land.” His statement is in Holland Herald, December 2012, flight-in magazine of Royal Dutch KLM.

The very substantial collection put together by our late Treasurer Harvey Duncan are to be sold by Corbitt’s auction house in mid-March. Details can be found in the Thematics section of that auction on their website : www.corbitts.com/ Realised values will also be posted there in due course and we will report these in Orbit. Some of the estimates, particularly for signed covers appears to be low !

There is one hitch. Such a mission would involve a one-way ticket only. After landing, there would be no way back. For those first pioneers on Mars, the Red Planet would become 15

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Conjugating the Magnetosphere with ARAKS

By Jim Reichman One of my “back-burner” Soviet philatelic interests came to the forefront recently when I received an email query and some commemorative cover scans from an ASSS member in New Zealand.(1) I think my interest in this subject was initiated many years ago when I purchased some spacerelated stamps and their first day of issue cover (FDC shown below) from an area called Territory of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (abbreviated TAAF from that name in French).

As it turned out, the magnetic field line that exits the Earth’s surface at the Kerguelen Islands re-enters the Earth’s surface near the town of Sogra in the Arkhangelsk Oblast area of northern Russia. Thus Kerguelen and Sogra were conjugate points as were other places around the world.

Some years after this conjugate relationship was uncovered, a joint Soviet-French project was set up to test the effects of pulsing or exciting the geomagnetic force line at one end and measuring the effects at the other, conjugate end.

Since charged particles following these magnetic force lines travel from the southern regions to the northern hemisphere, the artificial injection of charged particles had to be over the Kerguelen region and the resulting effects recorded at or near Sogra. One of these expected conjugate effects was some detectable change in the aurora borealis in northern Russia since aurora is caused by charged particles streaming down the magnetic lines of force and interacting with the air molecules causing them to emit light. See the aurora envelope cachet below.

The TAAF is comprised of seven French island-group territories scattered around the south Indian Ocean and a narrow slice of the Antarctic continent where French research is conducted. The particular island grouping these stamps are from is called Kerguelen Islands. This is a desolate, craggy, volcanic up-cropping rising above sea level at approximately 70.3° E longitude and 49.4° S latitude.

When Captain Cook sailed by in the 18 th century he called the area the “Desolation Islands”.

One habitable spot along the coastline was set up as a yearround meteorological station in 1951 and named Port-aux-Français.

This is probably the only spot with full year Kerguelen residents and is where their local post office was set up to postmark the FDC. The significance of Kerguelen’s relationship to anybody’s space programme has its roots in the discoveries made during the International Geophysical Year (IGY). That scientific-research year was when many research stations were set up around the world to monitor the Earth’s magnetic fields and magnetosphere. Maps of the Earth’s magnetosphere made possible by the information derived from those stations (during the IGY and the years afterward) allowed scientists to locate areas on the Earth’s surface that were linked by the same geomagnetic field line.

These linked areas are called “conjugate points”.

This auroral effect was one of the reasons the experiment was called Artificial Radiation and Aurora between Kerguelen and Sogra or ARAKS (2). The experiment concept was to launch an electron-beam gun on top of a rocket into the ionosphere above Kerguelen, inject charged particles into the magnetic field line near apogee, then record the resulting aurora and other ionization effects that occur over Sogra.

The French supplied the rockets that launched the main test equipment into the ionosphere. These were Eridan sounding rockets (see cover top of next column) which could lift a mass of about 130 kilograms up to 425 kilometres. (3) The Soviets supplied the electron injection gun carried aloft by these Eridan rockets. The Soviets’ Polar Geophysical Institute provided personnel and ground equipment (e.g., optical and radar sensors) at three locations (presumed to be at or near Sogra, Karpogory, and Pachikha based on the ARAKS cover postmarks seen) for monitoring the experiments at that conjugate point.(4) (5) The Soviets also deployed a research vessel, Borovichi, to one of the 16

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the final leg of the journey to the Kerguelen Islands. This aspect of the programme is nicely described in an online photo diary of the ARAKS experiment from the perspective of researcher Guy Penazzi who traveled to and was on Kerguelen during the launch part of the project. Guy’s web site is highly recommended because it contains close to 200 annotated photos showing and describing the various aspects of the ARAKS experiment (including launch photos) as well as how the researchers lived and worked on Kerguelen. See the URL in Endnote (6).

Kerguelen bays and a mobile, ground-based radar near the launch area to help with telemetry reception and other launch-event monitoring activities. (6) Although billed as a Soviet-French experiment, it was also supported by NASA, whose contribution included launching Super ARCAS sounding rockets to record X-rays that were expected to be emitted during electron gun firings. Typically two of these NASA rockets were launched at different intervals during the last few minutes prior to the Eridan launch. These rockets lofted the X-ray sensors to about 30 kilometres altitude where they began to hover under parachutes waiting for the Eridan launches. Commemorative covers were produced for these ARAKS-related launches as well (7) (as below).

The main method for transporting scientists, technicians, supplies, and equipment to and from Kerguelen was the French ship Marion Dufresne which could carry as many as 100 researchers and their equipment. Beside transport duties, the ship was also equipped to support an array of oceanic experiments on its own. The ARAKS cover opposite is a ship cover cancelled onboard the vessel while docked in Cape Town, South Africa on 28 October 1974. The envelope cachet on this cover identifies the fact that the ship was supporting the ARAKS project and that during this particular voyage (from September to October 1974) it was transporting two Eridan sounding rockets from France to Kerguelen.

The equipment and personnel were all ready for the launches by late-December 1974.

Unfortunately the weather (terrestrial and/or solar) was not good for launching the rockets nor viewing the aurora. Note that the conditions had to be correct for both Kerguelen and the Sogra area at the same time. One of the possible restrictions (noting that both launches occurred during the day) was that the Kerguelen launch site had to be in daylight at launch time. In order to maximize the viewing of aurora in the Sogra area, this meant that their part of the Earth had to be in darkness.

To maximize these kind of conditions simultaneously is probably why these rocket launches were scheduled to occur in the December through March timeframe, i.e., summer with the longest days in Kerguelen and winter with the longest nights in Sogra).

The first successful ARAKS launch was on 26 January 1975.

First to lift off were a couple of Super ARCAS rockets a few minutes apart followed by the Eridan rocket with all the main experiments onboard.

Philatelically this event was commemorated with a number of covers. These include those postmarked at the Port-aux-Français post office like the TAAF ARAKS-stamps FDC (shown the start of this article), the Super ARCAS sounding-rocket launch covers (one example shown left), and a French space agency (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales or CNES) (8) launch cover with a couple of local elephant seal residents pictured in the envelope cachet (shown on page 18). In the Arkhangelsk Oblast area, additional philatelic covers were postmarked at the post offices nearest the three aurora monitoring sites (in Sogra, Karpogory, and Pachikha). A Karpogory cover is shown top left of this page and a Sogra cover top right of the next page….

Many of the researchers and support personnel going to Kerguelen (as well as the other French ports in the South Indian Ocean) flew to Cape Town and boarded this ship for 17

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The graphic, hand-stamped cachet on this Sogra, first-launch cover is a simplified diagram of the ARAKS experiment concept. A rocket is shown launching from the southern hemisphere along a magnetic field line, the curlicue around that field line represents the charged particles injected from the rocket that are traveling northward, and an aurora image at the northern end of the field line being created by the interaction of those charged particles with the atmosphere.

A second, more complex hand-stamped cachet (above) was also seen on some Sogra ARAKS covers. This cachet also shows the Eridan rocket launching from the southern point of a geomagnetic field line (labeled “Kerguelen Island” in the cachet). However, instead of a charge particle traveling along that line to the northern hemisphere, the cachet shows a penguin walking northward. At the Sogra end of the field line (labeled “Sogra Observatory”) are the aurora and a radar station. These ground-based radar sensors were a second method used to detect the charge particles streaming down along the field line towards Earth. Five lines of text in this cachet read: Soviet-French Geophysical Experiment at Magnetic-Conjugate Points” in Russian.

One of these more-complex, Soviet cachets can be seen on the Sogra, first-launch cover : top of the right hand column. I labeled this particular envelope my “Conjugated ARAKS Launch Cover - because, after being postmarked on the first launch day at the Sogra conjugate point, the cover was transported to the second conjugate point at Kerguelen and postmarked there on the second Eridan rocket launch date.

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The second launch postmark (right) was applied to the back of this double-launch cover.

After arriving in Kerguelen, this doublelaunch cover also was hand-stamped with a TAAF ARAKS project cachet. This can be seen in the middle of the above cover and in the close-up view right.

There are no markings on these doublelaunch covers to indicate how many were made to allow collectors to assess their rarity. Also not seen but presumed to exist would be similar “conjugated” covers that were postmarked in Kerguelen for the first launch and sent to Sogra for postmarking on the day of the second launch.

That second and final Eridan launch for this ARAKS experiment occurred on 15 February 1975.

Commemorative covers were, of course, prepared for this event. An example of one of the French CNES covers is shown above. Two examples of the Soviet second-launch covers are shown on page 16 and in the cover top of the left hand column on page 19. The first was postmarked at Pachikha near one of the Soviet observation points in the Arkhangelsk Oblast while the second was from Sogra. This Sogra cover is hand-stamped with a black-ink version of the cachet shown in the left hand column. A second hand-

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stamped cachet (shown expanded above) implies that this cover was created by the “Geophysical Observatory at Sogra”. The cachet goes on to identify that this facility was operated by the Schmidt Institute of Earth Physics (part of the USSR Academy of Science).

Interestingly, this institute was not mentioned in the list of French and Soviet organizations supporting the ARAKS experiment that was printed on the back of the “Penguin” cover shown on page 18. The French organizations on that listing included CNES as well as the Centre for the Study of Space Radiation (CESR), the Institute of Astrophysics, and the aerospace manufacturer Aeropsatiale.

This latter organization is where the Eridan sounding rockets were produced.

Some of the Soviet organizations listed included: a) the Intercosmos Council, b) the Polar Geophysical Institute, c) the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere, and Radio Wave Propagation (IZMIRAN), d) the Hydrometeorology Service, and e) the Institute for Space Research (IKI). Many of these organizations (like the IKI) were part of the USSR Academy of Science. From the Soviet side, the ARAKS project was headed by the Director of the IKI, Academician Roald Sagdeev; his deputy was Igor Zhulin (9)

produced by the Soviet Intercosmos Council.

This presumption is based on the fact that the cachet text (i.e., “USSR Intercosmos” at the top., “French CNES” at the bottom, and “ARAKS 1975” in the middle) are all in Russian.

As can be seen on the 26 January 1977 anniversary cover the cachet above left was applied using black ink. The cachet also appeared on the 15 February 1977 anniversary cover but was applied using red ink on that second Icarusclub production Information found from online searches appears to say that the ARAKS experiment was a success. The sounding rockets were launched, the electron guns injected the charged particles into the magnetosphere, and scientific data was collected. It certainly appeared to be, by most measures, a model of success for the new paradigm of international cooperation in space emerging in the mid-1970s. If anything, it was perhaps only slightly overshadowed by the upcoming joint Soviet-US manned satellite docking experiment called the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Those flights took place only five months after the rocket-flight part of the ARAKS program ended in February 1975.

The ARAKS experiment was but one of the many joint, FrenchSoviet space programmes. This bi-lateral cooperation was commemorated by the Soviets with the issue of a set of three stamps and one souvenir sheet in June and July 1982. The 20 kopeck stamp from this set

This IKI leadership role may be the reason why ARAKS second-year anniversary covers were produced by the collector club associated with the IKI. That group called themselves the Icarus Philatelic Club and produced spacerelated commemorative covers postmarked with the IKIorganizational meter cancel. The ARAKS anniversary cover opposite is an example of such an Icarus club cover. That cover is one of two, ARAKS, second-year anniversary covers: this one postmarked on 26 January 1977 and a second one postmarked on 15 February 1977.

Both covers have hand-stamped ARAKS cachets (top of next column) and a printed logo cachet from the USSR Academy of Science (top right). The ARAKS cachet may have been 19

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specifically commemorates the ARAKS experiment as a significant example of this space cooperation.

Despite this hype, readers may have a hard time finding any assessments of the measurements taken at the Sogra conjugate point. Indeed, there are indications that no artificial aurora was observed. However, one report did acknowledge that the radars at Sogra detected ionization trails created by the charged particles coming from Kerguelen (10). Based on these limited results there was some concern in the Soviet academic circles regarding the usefulness of the ARAKS project.

After all, the existence of the magnetosphere lines of force, their relationship to aurora, and the interactions of conjugated points was already known before ARAKS. Although the ARAKS experiment did prove that radiation injected at one conjugate point could be detected at the other, some did not believe that this constituted enough of a scientific result to justify the time and effort to do so. (9) Regardless of the controversy about the scientific progress achieved, the ARAKS project does have some real Astrophilatelic potential for collectors. This is because there are philatelic covers to document the project’s background as well as covers postmarked at the respective rocket-launch and detector-location sites on the actual experiment dates. A few of these have been shown in this article and more are undoubtedly out there waiting to be found. Good luck and happy hunting in your quest to find these conjugate point covers.

1. Jackson, Gary, email dated 30 December 2012, Subject: “Karpogory Club”. Many thanks for the cover scans and information that Gary provided.

2. Four variations of the project name were seen. Some truncate “Artificial Radiation” into just “ARtificial” and some also may change “Sogra” into “Soviet Union”.

Let’s Celebrate 25 years of the A.S.S.S. - born in 1988 1988—Buran flies The Buran spacecraft (Бура́н - Snowstorm or Blizzard), was the Soviet orbital vehicle analogous in function and design to the US Space Shuttle and developed by Chief Designer Gleb LozinoLozinskiy of RKK Energia. Buran completed one unmanned spaceflight November 15th 1988 and remains the only Soviet space shuttle launched into space, as the programme was cancelled in 1993. The craft performed two orbits in just under three and half hours and landed perfectly on a concrete runway at Baikonur. It was controlled from the ground by cosmonauts Igor Volk and Anatoly Levchenko, the former being in the “wolf pack” of pilots slated to fly the craft into orbit, but lack of finances for regular Soyuz missions pointed to real troubles for the project with its projected launched much delayed.

Although to look at Buran was very similar to the NASA Shuttle it did not carry large reusable rocket engines but was a payload for the 3500 tone thrust Energia carrier rocket. In June 1989 the Antonov An-225 Mriya (Dream) craft carried Buran to the Paris Airshow, as seen in the Ukrainian issue below.

Buran was destroyed in 2002 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome when the hangar in which it was stored collapsed. In addition to the shuttle Buran, four other space shuttles were being built in the Buran programme before its cancellation.

Despite its very modest achievements Buran appears on over a dozen stamps, some of which are shown here, one of the most recent coming from Abkhazia in 2009.

3. http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/eridan.htm 4. Yevlashin, L. S., Sergey Ivanovich Isayev biography online at: http:// pgia.ru:81/seminar/archive/2006/Isayev.pdf 5. Article called “The epic of the balloons and sounding rockets at the TAAF from 1962 to 1981” at the online web site at: http://petits.yeux.free.fr/ index.php?pages/L-%C3%A9pop%C3%A9e-des-ballons-et-fus%C3%A9essondes-aux-TAAF-de-1962-%C3%A0-1981 6. Penazzi, Guy, The ARAKS Campaign, online at: http://www.webalice.it/ guypenazzi/UK_PAG._5.html 7. Toth, Garry & Hilger, Don emails 1 & 2 January 2013, Subject: ARAKS Information and Sounding Rocket Covers. See this cover and other ARAKS covers at their web site: http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/dev/hillger/wxrockets.htm 8. CNES abbreviation means National Centre for Space Studies in French 9. Vaisberg, Oleg, email dated 1 January 2013, Subject: “ARAKS Project Questions”.

10. Lavergnat, J, The French-Soviet Experiments ARAKS – Main Results, found online at: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1982apbs.proc...87L

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Let’s Celebrate 25 years of the A.S.S.S. - born in 1988 1990—H.S.T. Launched The Hubble Space Telescope was carried into orbit by a STS-31 on April 24th 1990 and remains in operation. A 2.4-metre (7.9 ft) aperture telescope in low Earth orbit, Hubble's four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared. The telescope is named after the astronomer Edwin Hubble.

Hubble's orbit outside the distortion of Earth's atmosphere allows it to take extremely sharp images with almost no background light.

Hubble's Deep Field have been some of the most detailed visible-light images ever, allowing a deep view into space and time. Many Hubble observations have led to breakthroughs in astrophysics, such as accurately determining the rate of expansion of the universe.

1994—Poliakov’s record flight Valeri Vladimirovich Polyakov (Валерий Владимирович Поляков, established 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 which ended on March 22nd 1995. 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, 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.

Although not the first space telescope, Hubble is one of the largest and most versatile, and is well known as both a vital research tool and a public relations boon for astronomy. The HST was built by NASA, with contributions from the European Space Agency, and is operated by the Space Telescope Science Institute. The HST is one of NASA's Great Observatories, along with the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Space telescopes were proposed as early as 1923.] Hubble was funded in the 1970s, with a proposed launch in 1983, but the project was beset by technical delays, budget problems, and the Challenger disaster. When finally launched in 1990, scientists found that the main mirror had been ground incorrectly, compromising the telescope's capabilities. The telescope was restored to its intended quality by a servicing mission in 1993.

Hubble is the only telescope designed to be serviced in space by astronauts. Between 1993 and 2002, four missions repaired, upgraded, and replaced systems on the telescope; a fifth mission was cancelled on safety grounds following the Columbia disaster.

However, after spirited public discussion, NASA administrator Mike Griffin approved one final servicing mission, completed in 2009 by Space Shuttle Atlantis. The telescope is now expected to function until at least late 2013. Its scientific successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), is to be launched in 2018 or possibly later.

Images of HST and taken by it appear on many stamps.

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Twenty Years of Italians in Space

by Umberto Cavallaro

Franco Malerba Twenty years have passed since July 31st 1992, when Franco Malerba was launched from the Kennedy Space Center onboard Shuttle Atlantis STS-46 and became the First Italian Astronaut in Space. Since then five Italian astronauts have flown on eight different missions, departing on Shuttle or Soyuz spacecraft.

Born in Busalla, Genoa in 1946, Franco Malerba graduated in Electronic Engineering and then in Physics at the University of Genoa, before joining, with different roles and responsibilities, research institutions and high tech industries both in Europe and in the States.

Malerba flew as a Mission Specialist in one high profile mission that generously publicized products of Italian science, technology and high-tech Industry: the Tethered satellite conceived and implemented in Italian universities and industries and tested for the first time during the STS-46 mission, and the EURECA platform, first example ever of a microgravity free-flyer and first European reusable satellite.

Malerba is shown as part of the STS-46 crew in this 2010 issue from Malawi.

Cheli and Guidoni are shown in a similar stamp in the series below right.

Maurizio Cheli and Umberto Guidoni In the second “Italian” mission Maurizio Cheli and Umberto Guidoni flew together in their first space mission aboard Shuttle STS-75 in February 1996 in which the Italian Tethered satellite TSS-1R was tested again and demonstrated the possibility of generating electrical power in space.

The text of the following pages first appeared in AdAstra for June 2012 and is reproduced by Umberto’s kind permission.

AS.IT.AF. commemorative card by © Alec Bartos.

Maurizio Cheli (above left) with his background as a test pilot, became the first Italian astronaut – and first non-American – to play the role of Shuttle Mission Specialist, as “flight engineer” in charge of board systems and Shuttle instrumentation.

The Physicist Umberto Guidoni, (above right) as with Malerba, flew as a Payload Specialist in charge of monitoring the electrodynamical experiments of the Tethered Satellite he knew well, as he had participated in its design and implementation, earlier as a researcher in the National Research Council, within the Physics Institute for Interplanetary Space, and then as the Scientific Manager of RETE (Research on Electro-dynamic Tether Effects), in charge 22

Malerba’s mission was officially celebrated by Poste Italiane which issued a postal stationery featuring the imprinted stamp the Tethered satellite connected to the Shuttle. The cachet bears the picture of Prof. Giuseppe Colombo who conceived the TSS experiment

Mission Specialist” and the first European astronaut to visit the ISS.

of organizing the scientific tests of the TSS. He had also participated in the first TSS Mission as backup for Malerba and ground-coordinator of the scientific tests implemented onboard during the STS-46 Mission.

Guidoni flew again in space onboard the shuttle Endeavour in the STS-100 mission – from April 19 to May 1st, 2001 – and became the first Italian astronaut certified as “ISS

The mission delivered into space on its maiden flight the Raffaello module, one of the three Pressurized Logistic Modules (MPLM) committed by ASI (Italian Space Agency) and built in Italy by Thales Alenia Space. Raffaello, also known as MPLM-2, transferred nine tons of supplies, equipment and scientific instrumentation. Raffaello flew four missions and for the last time, was launched aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis on the STS-135 mission, the last ever flight of the Space Shuttle.

Roberto Vittori Roberto Vittori, is an Italian Air Force officer, and was the first non-Russian “cosmonaut” to play the role of Soyuz Flight Engineer and the first Italian to fly with Soyuz.

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Vittori has participated in three spaceflights. From April 25 to May 5, 2002, Vittori participated in the Soyuz TM-34 taxiflight to the ISS. This “Marco Polo” mission successfully delivered a new "lifeboat" to the Station for use by resident crews in the event of an on-board emergency. Vittori returned to Earth aboard Soyuz TM-33.

On April 15, 2005, he participated in a second taxi-flight to the ISS and became the first European astronaut to visit the ISS twice. He was also the first Italian astronaut to fly twice on the Soyuz spacecraft. During his second mission dubbed “Eneide” conducted experiments in upper limb fatigue in astronauts and germination of herbaceous plant seeds for possible space nutrition .

In May 2011 Vittori was a Mission Specialist for NASA Space Shuttle mission STS134, where he conducted 12 scientific experiments.

He was the last non-US astronaut to fly on the Shuttle. During this “historic” Mission Roberto Vittori met up

with Paolo Nespoli on the ISS during his long-duration Expedition “MagISStra”.

Paolo Nespoli Paolo Nespoli flew twice to the ISS. In October 2007 he launched on board STS-120, the Space Shuttle mission which delivered to the ISS the Harmony module (also known as Node 2) builtby Thales Alenia Space at its facility in Turin.

Paolo Nespoli Left Lollini inspired issues relating to Vittori’s first flight

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After passing a very challenging selection procedure alongside 8.400 astronaut candidates from several European Countries, Luca Parmitano was recruited into the ESA Astronaut Corps in 2009. A test pilot, logging thousands of hours of flying time on more than 40 types of military airplanes and helicopters, his profile is that of the veteran pilot astronaut.

In December 2010, Nespoli flew to the ISS aboard the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome and served as first flight engineer for Expedition 26/27, Europe’s third six-month mission to the ISS and Italy’s first. Paolo Nespoli’s duties aboard the ISS included participating in the docking operations to receive Europe’s ATV-2, Johannes Kepler.

Luca Parmitano flying to ISS with Mission “Volare” Luca Parmitano, the next Italian to fly in space, is currently undergoing an intensive training programme to prepare his six-month Mission on the International Space Station during the expedition 36/37 planned to start by late May 2013.

AS.IT.AF. (The Italian astrophilatelic society) contacted him by phone while he was training in the ESA Space Operation Centre in Cologne (Germany) and he commented, “The training is very demanding. From now on, it is spread in three different Astronaut Centres: partly in the States, partly in Germany and partly in Russia. In the States we are engaged on many fronts: on one hand we are familiarizing ourselves with daily life onboard ISS, emergency procedures and payload management.

He will be the third Italian astronaut, or rather “cosmonaut” – after Vittori and Nespoli – to be launched from the mythical launch pad from where Gagarin left, and to fly on the historical Soyuz invented by Korolëv, quite basic but reliable. Currently after the retirement of Shuttle, this is the only option for everybody wanting to reach the “cosmic house”. As already outlined before, once on the Station he will deal, among others tasks, with the management of Columbus and will welcome the ATV which will arrive, presumably, in the middle of his Mission, and will take care of unloading the delivered supplies.

At the beginning of September Parmitano took a break in his intensive training programme, to award the winners of the competition “Disegna e Designa la Missione” (“Design and Designate the Mission”), organised by ASI (Italian Space Agency) to suggest the emblem of the Mission. The logo combines together the name chosen by Norberto Cioffi (32 years old – from Pantigliate, Milano) and the drawing designed by Ilaria Sardella (28 – from San Giorgio Ionico, Taranto).

Particularly evocative is the name “Volare” (“Flying”), after the popular song by the late Italian singer-songwriter Domenico Modugno well known worldwide, which suggests the desire of discovering new frontiers.

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The Naming of the Uranian Moons

“Arguably an undesirable naming system”…….Patrick Moore.

The Major Moons Titania is the largest of the 27 known moons of Uranus and the eighth largest moon in the Solar System at a diameter of 1,578 kilometres (981 mi).

Its orbit lies inside the planet’s magnetosphere.

It consists of approximately equal amounts of ice and rock, and is probably differentiated into a rocky core and an icy mantle.

Oberon, also designated Uranus IV, is the outermost major moon and the second largest and second most massive of the moons, and the ninth most massive in the Solar System. Its orbit lies partially outside Uranus's magnetosphere. It is likely that Oberon formed from the accretion disk that surrounded Uranus just after the planet's formation

Table and above text ex Philip’s Atlas of the Universe (1999) ed Patrick Moore. Text about the moons edited from various Wiki entries.

Titania is named after the queen of the fairies in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Oberon is her partner, the king. Titania is depicted in a handful of stamps often mesmerised by the weaver Bottom wearing his ass’s head as in East Germany 1973 left.

Oberon, as played by the celebrated Canadian actor and singer Félix Leclerc appears in this Millennium issue for the Arts 26

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Umbriel the third largest moon was discovered on October 24, 1851, by William Lassell and named after a character in Alexander Pope's poem The Rape of the Lock. Umbriel consists mainly of ice with a substantial fraction of rock and may be differentiated into a rocky core and an icy mantle. The surface is the darkest among Uranian moons, and appears to have been shaped primarily by impacts.

Ariel is the fourth-largest, orbiting and rotating in the equatorial plane almost perpendicular to the planet’s orbit, and so has an extreme seasonal cycle. It was discovered by William Lassell on the same night he first spotted Umbriel, and named for a character in two different pieces of literature—a sky spirit in Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock and Shakespeare's The Tempest.

No stamps exist depicting either of these characters though The Tempest was marked by a GB issue on 12th April 2011 and Return to the Forbidden Planet, the “juke-box” musical which was inspired by it in a GB issue in February 2011.

Also named after a character in The Tempest is Miranda, (aka Uranus V) the smallest and innermost of the five major moons, discovered by Gerard Kuiper on February 16, 1948 at McDonald Observatory. The tiny moons Sycorax and Caliban are also named characters in The Tempest.

Juliet shown on the balcony in this Hungarian stamp from 1948.

Above right Cordelia the most devoted of King Lear’s three daughters about to be banished by him on East Germany 1973 Middle right, the innocent Desdemona about to be murdered

by Othello (not with a knife but a pillow !) in Fujeira 1969.

Right, Ophelia (left) in shackles, symbolic of her infatuation with Hamlet shown between her and his mother Queen Gertrude.

(Poland 1969) Curiously the best known representation of Ophelia, shown here having drowned, in a painting by Sir John Millais has not yet appeared on a stamp.

The Lesser Moons Puck is an inner moon discovered in December 1985 by the Voyager 2 spacecraft. Puck, the name of a mischievous sprite comes from Celtic mythology and English folklore: he is also a benevolent sprite in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and is shown on GB 1964 left. The orbit of Puck lies between the rings of Uranus and the first of Uranus' large moons, Miranda. Puck is approximately spherical in shape and has diameter of about 162 km. It has a dark, heavily cratered surface, which shows spectral signs of water ice Of a dozen or so tiny moons named after Shakespearean heroines, Cordelia (King Lear), Ophelia (Hamlet), Desdemona (Othello) and Juliet (Romeo and Juliet) are depicted on stamps.

There are stamps for several of the plays in which other female characters with Uranian moons named after them feature—like Rosalind in As You Like it and Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew but none depict them.

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Next time: Neptune’s moons—named after the more obscure characters of class ical mythology

ORBIT

John Glynn John Glynn of Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, a loyal member since 1993 passed on 4th February. The Society extends its deepest condolences to his widow Maureen.

This item by a prolific contributor to the British glossy STAMP Magazine appeared in the March 2013 edition. Any comments on its claim re the first Gagarin commemorative ??

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ISS—New Official OnBoard Postmark

by Igor Rodin, Chairman of the FIP Section for Astrophilately To commemorate the 55th anniversary of the launch of the First Satellite, Russian Post issued two official postmarks. One was used at Moscow’s GPO on October 04, 2012 (picture 1, right). The other one was issued specially to use on board the International Space Station (picture 2, far right). The main difference between the twopostmarks is the words in the middle of the second cancellation - “The Board of the ISS. Russian Segment.”

The “55th Anniversary of the First World Satellite Launch. Board of ISS. Russian Segment” special official board postmark was delivered to the ISS by the “Soyuz TMA-05M” spacecraft.

The Russian "Soyuz TMA-05M” spacecraft was launched from Baykonur Cosmodrome on July 15, 2012. The spacecraft was piloted by 3 cosmonauts: Commander, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko; flight-engineer, American astronaut Sunita Williams; flight-engineer, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide.

On July 17, 2012 "Soyuz TMA-05M” spacecraft docked with the Russian "Rassvet” module of the International Space Station. TMA05M delivered three new members of Expedition 32 to the ISS. The new comers joined current ISS expedition members Russian cosmonauts Gennadiy Padalka and Sergey Revin as well as American astronaut Joseph Acaba to form Expedition 32 crew of 6 members. Padalka, Revin and Acaba had been aboard the station for 2 months since arriving in May 2012 and they returned to Earth on September 17, 2012 aboard the TMA-04M landing capsule.

The new board postmark devoted to the First Satellite was used officially aboard the ISS on October 04, 2012 at the day of the 55th Anniversary of the first world satellite launch. On that day Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko wrote several letters addressed to his cosmonaut-friends and marked them with the new board postmark. In this article you can see the letter and envelope written by cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and addressed to Russian veterancosmonaut Vasiliy Tsibliev .

The letter was delivered to Earth by Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft.

Aboard the station the letter was also marked with the “ISS” octagonal board seal, and the “Russian Segment of International Space Station” board souvenir seal dated November 19, 2012, the day when the Russian Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft undocked from the ISS. The next day after the landing of SoyuzTMA-05M spacecraft, the letter was sent from the Post Office of Zvyozdny Gorodok (Russian Cosmonaut Training Centre) to the addressee, Russian cosmonaut Vasiliy Tsibliev.

The “55th Anniversary of the First World Satellite Launch. Board of ISS. Russian Segment” special official board postmark was also returned back to Earth by “Soyuz TMA-05M” spacecraft.

Because of possible unofficial using of the board postmark on Earth after its returning, while aboard the station a small part of one ray of the upper star in the cancellation was cut off to identify flown letters from not-flown items.

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ORBIT

The Struve Geodetic Arc Text below and image of stamp left from Fascination magazine no 328—2/2011 produced by United Nations Postal Administration.

Stamp issued 5.5.11 shows the marker pillar at Fuglenes in Hammerfest, Norway on the Struve-Bogen (Struve Arc) Wiki-map right shows the line of markers, also identifying UNESCO World Heritage Sites

The northernmost station of the Struve Geodetic Arc is located in Fuglenes, Norway.

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Estonian mini-sheet right (issued 6.5.11) comprises two stamps, one showing German astronomer Friedrich Struve and a map of station points from Tartu via Oulu to North Cape in the border and the other Tartu Observatory which has one of extant station points and a map of the survey triangulation system within present day Estonia. In the border is a variety of surveying instruments.

The 6.5.11 Finland commemorative (below) consists of two 2LK stamps showing part of a panoramic view of a lake (continued in the border) and a map of Finland showing the six measurement points of the arc within the country, from Stuorrahanoaivi to Mustviiri (with their names as in the 19th century) listed top left with map references. Along the bottom is a photograph of scientists taking observations.

Sweden’s appropriately triangular issues (6.5.11) show a theodolite used in the measurements made around 1850 by the Swedish astronomer Mortimer Agardh and the standard image of Struve. In the border is a map of the triangulation from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean and results published in St Petersburg (1857-60).

Within the Latvia mini-sheet (6.5.11) the 35s val has a map of the country indicating the Struve trigonometrical points and a simple marker stone whilst the higher val depicts Struve with a theodolite and map of the arc from Finland to the Ukraine. Within the order is a tower (used as a point on the arc), a theodolite and a (GoogleEarth type) view from Latvia from high altitude.

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The Belarus issue is unusually perforated for a mini-sheet and appears to contain one stamp and several labels, most of which are devoted to a 19th C map of Europe. The expanded map of the country in this stamp referenced in the margin shows the arc passing through the five station points within its territory.

Lithuania’s two stamps again show a map of the arc across Europe beside a portrait of Struve and a basalt pillar at Meschkanzi (Meškonys) in Nemenčinė. In the selvage are UNESCO and the World Heritage logo which appears on some Struve issues.

The Moldovan issue left is a prepaid envelope from 2008 showing the marker pillar near Rudi village, the only such point in the country. It was issued in connection with the 160th anniversary of the observation.

Three countries with Struve pillars or markers did not issue for him in 2011: Norway, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine. Moldova had done so three years before and Norway produced many other issues in the Spring of 2011, so perhaps one for Struve as well was one too many ?? awarded their Gold Medal the same year and was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1833. In 1843 Wilhelm formally adopted Russian nationality. He retired in 1862 due to failing health.

The asteroid 768 Struveana was named jointly in his honour and that of Otto Wilhelm and Karl Hermann Struve and a lunar crater was named for another three astronomers of the Struve family: Friedrich Georg Wilhelm, Otto Wilhelm and Otto. (Edited from Wiki entry)

Struve commemorated by USSR in 1954 (Pulkovo observatory) and 1964

Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve (Russian: Vasily Yakovlevich Struve) (April 15, 1793 – November 23, 1864 was a German Below Estonian cancel for Struve’s 200th birth anniversary, astronomer from a famous dynasty—son of Jacob Struve (1755– though it appears to show “13th” not 15th April.

1841).

In 1808 he entered the Imperial University of Dorpat, where he first studied philology, but soon turned his attention to astronomy. From 1813 to 1820, he taught at the university and collected data at the Dorpat Observatory, and in 1820 became a full professor and director of the observatory. His teaching has had strong effect that is still felt in at the university.

Struve was occupied with research on double stars and geodesy in Dorpat until 1839, when he founded and became director of the new Pulkovo Observatory near St Petersburg. Among other honours, he won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1826.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in March, 1827 and was

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Struve Related Media from Margaret Morris’s Collection Above an old postcard dated July 1899 including the Hammerfest monument, shown in modern photographs on page 30 and above right a Cinderella showing the monument, Newton and Pulkovo Right an unused postcard of Tartu (Dorpat) printed in 1961 from a drawing by A. KŹtt, and below a printed envelope (not postal stationery) of the same. Also a modern postcard of the Meridian Monument, fairly similar to the one on page 30. This card is not postally used but has been annotated in pencil on the back as - 21:7:67, which dates the card. The railings shown in 1899 have been removed as you can see in modern images.

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Something Special From Czechoslovakia by Bert van Eijck When a man is getting older (in years, though not in spirit !), there comes a moment he has to think of the inevitable: his mortality. That is the time he has to consider what to do with all the papers and other stuff he has collected in the past. His children and family are not interested. So he has a lot to clear away.

I am such a man. And so I found in a forgotten album an astrophilatelic envelope from Ceskoslovensko = Czechoslovakia. I remembered: this was Something Special.

It was a large unaddressed envelope, measuring 22x11 centimetres, with at the right top an imprinted blue stamp without value. Pictured are a globe and a satellite and the words “service des postes” (the international postal language is French). On the left side we see some trees in a landscape, a small posthorn and a post coach as in the old days with horses and a ‘chief whip.’ Inside the envelope is a card with the text Happy New Year in six languages at the left side and “PF (Pour Felicité?) 1992”. At the right side a large posthorn and within a postman on horseback. Beneath this the sender: Federal Ministry of Czechoslovakia.

I immediately recalled how I came by it. It was given to me

about this extraordinary meeting in The Astrophile, the Space Unit’s magazine. In October 1999 another, different piece was published in Orbit No. 43. Titled “Adventures in Astrophilately 5”, in which also my failed kidnapping was described.

Pavel Kosik, an IT-specialist at IBM and his wife Anna, a pediatrician, stayed twice for a week at my home in The Netherlands, both learning a lot from our different cultures.

It was very sad to hear Pavel died some years ago.

But back now to the mysterious envelope. There sure was one person who could tell me more about it. That was Julius Cacka, an expert on Astro- and Czech philately.

He also is President of the Czech Astrophilately Society and author of several books and articles.

An e-mail was sent quickly to Julius, and his answer was equally prompt.

He wrote: Your envelope is not a mass -produced article but a serviceenvelope of the Czech Post. In the Czech stamp catalogue it is number CSO 9, issued in 1991. The Federal Ministry of Telecommunication of CSSR began issuing these envelopes in 1982.

by Pavel Kosik early in 1993, now 20 years ago. Pavel was one of my pen friends in Eastern Europa in the Cold War time. We had correspondence and exchanged stamps for over ten years, and never had seen each other!

This was possible via The Space Unit, the sister society of the ASSS in USA, of which we were both members. In 1988 we finally met face to face at the World Stamp Exhibition in Prague.

In May 1989 I wrote a piece (“An SU meeting in Prague”)

The stamp is in steel printing while the illustration left is in book printing. The Czech satellite Magion II is pictured on the stamp. How many of these envelopes are printed was never revealed, but Julius Cacka estimates there is a maximum of 1500 pieces. In the Czech Republic such an envelope will cost – if you ever can find it, because it is rare – from 2500 to 3500 Czech Kronen. That is €100 to €140.

Thanks to Julius Cacka I know that this is not an envelope to throw away……

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ORBIT

The Mission that Failed by Bert van Eijck Searching in Vain For The Origin of a Stamp This is the story of a mission that failed. It took place on the Caribbean island of Curacao, a former Dutch colony, independent since October 2010 .

In the stamp collection of worldwide satellite ground stations I once had, there was one from “Nederlandse Antillen”, a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea, belonging to motherland The Netherlands. In fact it was a set of three stamps, issued October 16, 1978, celebrating 70 years of telegraph, telephone and telex communication. The value of 55c shows a satellite dish in connection with a satellite, erected on the main island Curacao.

So, when my cruiseship, the British Marco Polo, disembarked for one day in Sint Anna Baai (St. Anne’s Bay) in the centre of capital Willemstad, I hired a cab to go to the satellite station. That was difficult, for cabin driver Erwin did not know where to go, but with the help of colleagues we drove to a suburb, called Pareira.

dishes for satellite communication. I promised once home again to send her an e-mail with my information and asked her to look into her archives, and tell more of the present time. Alas, despite two extensive mails Miss Maduro never answered.

From the internet I learned that “Antilliaanse Televisie Maatschappij” began life as the first television station of the Netherlands Antilles on July 31, 1960. The station was known as “TeleCuracao”. Founded by the American Gerald Bartell, with the help of the government, the station was allowed to begin a commercial broadcasting, so it could get income from sponsorship to pay for the programming.

Most of the programming in that time consisted of taped series from the USA. Besides that there was only the local news combined with live announcements of the local sponsors. The station began growing and after a few years there were more local live programmes and even more sponsors.

At an isolated place on a mountain we came to the office of TeleCuracao. Inside we spoke briefly to Nicole M.J. Maduro, Executive News Producer. She did not know anything of the old satellite station nor of the stamp I showed her. It was too long ago. Behind the office building there were several

Nowadays, TeleCuracao has turned into a television station that offers live productions, studio productions, on screen productions, a wide variety of programming including the latest news and sports news, both local and international.

Yet, I still did not know more of the dish on the stamp. So, what to do next? I mailed the Museum for Communication (former Post Museum) in The Hague for information. And there I got answers. Conservator Monique Erkelens wrote to me that on October 16, 1908 a coastal station for morse code telegraphy was established on Curacao that developed into Curacaose Radio with call name PJC. And – nothing is known about the satellite station on the stamp, maybe it was just a symbolic picture. The Post Museum on Curacao may have the original designs, and the stamp designer is Eric van der Sar in Willemstad. Thank you, Monique.

On to the Postmuseum Curacao. Do not know what it is, the tropical heat perhaps, but I never got an answer on my mail to the Postmuseum.

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There was only one option open: the designer. Via Facebook I got in contact with Eric van der Sar, who happened to live not in Willemstad anymore, but in my home country—The Netherlands.

An intensive mailing followed. And how small a world it is…..

Born on Curacao (1939) he went to school first on the island, later in Ontaria, Canada. He came not only to my country to live, but even in my town Groningen to study medicine at university. This was not a success, so he went to Art Academy “Minerva”, which lies very close to where I live…..

Later Eric returned to Curacao and became a teacher at high school. Because he has studied design and was an ‘Antilliaan’, he was able and asked to design stamps for the Postal Authorities. His wife Marijke de Lange designed stamps too.

In 1978, the year his communications stamp series came out, he came to The Netherlands again and started his bureau ‘Sar Design.” And yes, he is related to Edwin van der Sar, (left) formerly famous goalkeeper for Manchester United though he says, “The only thing we have in common are our big ears.”

Now Eric is retired, doing all kinds of design for the local stamp club he is member of. To inform Orbit readers he was willing to search his attic for old stamp designs from his Curacao period. He did found some sketches but not from the communications stamps. He also searched in his photo archive, but it was all in vain. Nevertheless, he did his utmost. A hearty thank you, Eric!

Another story of this author depicting Curacao was published in Orbit No. 94, June 2012, titled “Space Tourism Soon Reality.”

Belgian FDC travelled to the International Space Station A First Day Cover issued by the Belgian Post has spent five months on the International Space Station. The envelope, commemorating the legendary Mayan calendar, was launched to the ISS on board the unmanned cargo freighter Progress M-15M from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 20 April 2012. It arrived at the Space Station two days later, and returned to Earth with Station Commander Gennady Padalka on 17 September 2012. Thereafter, it was returned to the collector in Brussels who had “launched” the initiative.

The Belgian stamp honouring the Mayan calendar was issued by bpost on 16 January 2012. The envelope was postmarked at the pre-sale of the stamp in the Flemish city of Tongeren on 14 January 2012. To document the flight, the envelope carries a circular board cancellation of the date of arrival at the Space Station, 22 April 2012. A red octagonal board cancel confirms the stay at the Station, as does another blue board cancellation of the Russian station segment on the same day. An additional Belgian stamp to cover the fee for a registered letter, however, was not postmarked, and the registration label is equally missing, even though the fee for this service had been paid.

Belgium issued the stamp to honour the legendary Mayan calendar, the most advanced astronomical calendar of the pre-Columbian Mesoamerican citizens. According to some, the count of the Mayan calendar ends on 21 December 2012, followed by the end of the world. Scientists, however, reject such an interpretation. In a message to the cosmonauts, Brussels-based Jürgen Esders told the cosmonauts on board the Station that “if the World goes under, no one will have a better view of it than the cosmonauts on the International Space Station. If the World is still intact (after 21 December), you might want to send the cover back to me. If not, you may keep it as a souvenir of this memorable moment”. Most evidently, “Station Commander Padalka wanted to play it safe by taking the envelope back to Earth with him on 17 September”, collector Jürgen Esders says with a smile.

German-born Jürgen Esders (aged 54) lives in the Brussels commune of Schaerbeek and has been collecting stamps and covers documenting space flights since his childhood. He is a longstanding member of B.F.V. Cosmos, the Ghent-based stamp club of astrophilatelists in Belgium and the ASSS. The club’s President is Dr. Stefan Bruylants from O.L.V. Waver, also an ASSS member.

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See John email for download 13.11.12 ORBIT

Voskhod, the most dangerous spacecraft ever flown asserts John Beenen In the middle of 1963 after the flight of Vostok 6 with Valentina Tereshkova the Soviets had few plans for what to do between the period from this flight until the newly developed Soyuz, which would be ready only in the course of 1965.

The rocket

Hence they space bureaux scheduled 10 additional Vostok flights a number quickly to by the Soviet leadership.

However, these Vostoks would be ready only in 1964. It is unknown how the idea developed to carry out a three person flight but it was a fact that the American Gemini space programme slowly caught up with the Soviets and that they started to worry about the loss of their lead.

So at the beginning of 1964 it was decided to adapt the four Vostoks for three crew flights. Hence the Voskhod was created, in essence a reconstructed Vostok, but from which a number of essential safety precautions were left out to the peril of cosmonauts. In the design the escape possibility for the first 27 seconds after launch was omitted in favour of a third chair for a cosmonaut. Also the chairs were mounted perpendicularly compared to Vostok. On the descent module a breaking package was constructed. This became a necessity as, unlike with Vostok, the crew were to remain in their seats during descent. As the instrument panel was not repositioned the cosmonauts had to crane their necks to read the instruments.

Since in principle, there was room for only two persons, the Voskhod became a very narrow unit. The diameter of the descent module in which the cosmonauts and the service panel were placed, was 2,3 m (contents 4,15 m 3). In short, very uncomfortable. To create more room for the cosmonauts also the ejection seats at landing were removed.

Therefore the cosmonauts were forced to remain in their seats. For the first Voskhod flight the cosmonauts wore ordinary working suits as with three crew members the size of three space suits would be too much. For the second flight space suits were necessary for the space walking trip. The second cosmonaut (as well as the space-walker) had to wear such a suit also as he would not remain in a vacuum should the air lock did not work well.

An adaptation of the R-7 missile was used for the launch of Voskhod as for Vostok. Its basis was standard and had a central core with 4 boosters around (11A57-0), Its length was 19 m and the ignition time 119 seconds.

Also the second stage (1 part, 11A571) was unchanged with respect to Vostok. This had a length of 28 m and an ignition time of 301 seconds. The upper stage was the 11A57-2 or SL-4, in its origin an intercontinental R-9A missile by which the larger weight of the Voskhod could be placed into orbit. This stage measured only 3 m and its ignition time was 240 seconds. The Soviets called such a construction a two stage rocket as the first stage was called the zero stage.

Liquid oxygen/kerosene combination was used as a fuel for all stages. Such a rocket combination was used for many further flights afterwards but has now been superseded.

Cosmos 47 On October 6th 1964 Cosmos 47 was launched as a test flight for Voskhod 1, launched 6 days later on the 12th of October.

Originally 6 Voskhod flights were planned but only two actually were carried out after which the programme was ended to be replaced by the Soyuz series.

This was possible as the original goals, to defeat the Americans by a three crew flight and a space walk were reached. However, the most common reason to end the programme was the change of leadership in the USSR were on the 124th of October Nikita Khrushchev was replaced by Leonid Brezhnev, who cared less about space records.

Furthermore, before Voskhod 3 could have been launched there was a considerable delay and the progress in the Gemini project meaning that the Soviets could not easily gain more space “firsts�.

In the case of Voskhod 2 an inflatable air lock was placed to facilitate Leonov the possibility of a space walk. The air lock was necessary as in principle the cabin should not become airless as its instruments were air cooled and could overheat. Hence, with 5682 kg Voskhod was more than one ton heavier than Vostok at 4725 kg.

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Voskhod 1 On October 12th 1964 Voskhod 1, also called Vostok 3KV, was launched from its base Baikonur. Its call sign was ‘Rubin’.

Voskhod is Russian for sunrise or dawn.

The crew consisted of three cosmonauts: Col. Vladimir Komarov (19271967), Konstantin Feoktistov (technician,1926-2009) and Boris Yegorov (med.doctor, 1937-1994). Their back-up crew was: Georgi Katys (1926), Vasili Lazarev (1928-1990) and Boris Volynov (1934).

The technician Feoktistov, who actually was an important member of the design crew, showed his trust in the design to climb on board though it was rumoured that Korolev forced him to do so. The medical doctor Yegorov owed his position to relations of his father within the Soviet Polit buro.

On the occasional Moscow rumour mill stories were told that a space walk would happen, that shortly after the first launch a second one should be launched and that the cosmonauts should transfer positions. That was a bit too optimistic. The space walk was the main aim of the second flight and transfer of seats would only be reserved for a Soyuz mission.

But with an altitude of 336 km Voskhod 1 set not only the record for a three crew flight but also for the maximum altitude so far. The choice of the cosmonauts was not free from discussion. Originally an experienced cosmonaut was chosen as a commander (Titov, Bykovsky or Popovich), but Korolev was heavily against this plan. Therefore it created great tensions between the chairman of the space project Sergey Korolev, who was in favour of technician and scientist cosmonauts, whilst the military only wanted their own pilots.

For every position possible candidates were shifted around.

But with only three months the time for training was very limited. Finally the actual names emerged but every time in other positions. The first crew should have been consisted of: Volynov, Katyz and Yegorov, with as a back-up: Komarov, Feoktistov and Alexei Sorokin (1931-1976) and as a stand-in for both doctors: Lazarev. For the first space walk with Voskhod 2: Belyayev, Khrunov, Leonov and Gorbatko were trained. For the first flight finally Katyz was dropped as in the very narrow cabin he did not fit the seat and was some cm’s too long. Also Korolev wanted Feoktistov in the crew as he knew the spacecraft very well. His colleagues however were against it as his medical records included blemishes.

Then it was discovered that Katys had a brother and sister living in Paris, and within the context of the Cold War his flying was impossible, even though they had gone there 16 years before Katyz even was born.

When it also appeared that his father has been executed by the Soviets he was removed from his position. He Georgi P. Katys tried to challenge this decision but soon Photo ex The Soviet afterwards he left the space Cosmonaut Team by Gordon Hooper programme and was never heard of.

Finally Korolev pushed his opinions through and the cosmonauts who manned the Voskhod 1 were chosen.

On October 13th 1964 at 7.47 (GMT) after 16 orbits the cosmonauts landed safely after a flight of 24 hours and 17 min. Possibly the flight should have lasted longer, but because of the fall of Khrushchev the crew was called back earlier. But there circulates also a rumour that there were troubles with the radio connection and that there were difficulties with the sanity of Feoktistov and Yegorov. For the first rumour I could not find any confirmation. The second one is very likely and was admitted by the Soviets one year later. Also Titov suffered from space sickness after a longer flight and Feoktistov and Yegorov were relatively untrained.

Cosmos 57 Cosmos 57 was launched on February 22nd 1965 as a test flight for Voskhod 2. It just could be observed that the inflatable lock and the space suit worked properly, but when two of the ground stations simultaneously sent a signal the retropackage was fired and the self-destruction mechanism started. Hence, the flight wasn’t a success after all. The outside world only was informed that it had been an experimental flight to study the upper atmosphere and space.

Cosmos 59 That’s why two weeks later on March 7th Cosmos 59 was launched, expressly to check on the air lock system at re-

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entry. The system landed on March 15th, the lock presenting no difficulties.

Voskhod 2 Hence, on March 18th Voskhod 2, 3 KD, in the beginning also called ‘Vykhod’ (progress), was launched with on board: col. Pavel Beliayev (19251970) and lt.col. Alexei Leonov (1934).

Their call sign was ‘Almaz’ = Diamond.

However in the planning stages cosmonauts were changed constantly.

Georgy Beregovoi (1921-1995) was assigned for this flight but the management preferred smaller less heavily built cosmonauts. Berogovoi was larger and heavier. However only Victor Gorbatko (b.1934) and Dimitri Zaykin (b.1932) fulfilled the requirements for length and weight.

Relative to the first craft Voskhod 2 was modified for the presence of an inflatable airlock to enable Leonov to make a space walk before the Americans could do it. Their back-up team was: Dimitri Zaykin and Yevgeny Khrunov (1933-2000) and as a reserve crew: Victor Gorbatko and Pjotr Kolodin

Then, to close the lock, he had to turn around in the tiny cabin, which appeared rather difficult. Closing it did not go smoothly and the cabin system began to supply oxygen which caused a dangerous situation as an atmosphere of pure oxygen easily could set fire as the Apollo 1 disaster unfortunately had proved.

Finally the lock was closed. Then the automatic return system failed and there really was no time left to switch to the manual system. Therefore Leonov had to return to his seat quickly and activate the manual system. That was only possible with a delay of 46 seconds.

Then during return the service and crew modules did not separate completely and the whole complex started to rotate with the cables as centre. This only stopped at a height of 100 km when the cables finally burned through.

Caused by that series of delays the craft landed 368 km beyond the planned landing site and finished finally deep into the Ural Mountains in Siberia in a forest in deep snow of a thickness of 2 m. Finally their position was located at 54º 12’ N en 45º 10’ O (also given as 59º 24’N, 55º 28’ O) between the villages Sorokovaya and Shchuchino 30 km southwest of the town of Berezniki.

(b.1930).

After launch the space ship was boosted to an orbit of 104 to 295 km. At the end of the first orbit Leonov was ready to start his space walk which finally lasted for 12 minutes and 9 seconds. Initially he declared: ‘I felt like a bird and could fly’.

Later the walk was less enjoyable, in particular the return.

His space suit became inflated to such an extent that it became difficult to move and his fingers and toes were pulled out of their positions in the suit. He could not reach the shutter of his camera and started to sweat to such an extent that water pooled in his suit. But what was really serious was that he did not fit anymore in the airlock. Thus, against orders he returned head first and even partly had to decompress his suit so risking decompression sickness and suffering from increasing heat in his extremities. Fortunately he finally succeeded in getting back to the cabin.

NB. When we search at Google Earth both positions are not right. The first ends in the middle of the town of Saransk, the second is closer by, but still far too close to the villages.

You will find Sorokovaya 58º 58’ N, 55º 32‘ O. On Google Earth some nice pictures of this environment could be found.

Even after the landing the problems did not stop when the exit hatch did not open as it was blocked by a tree. Finally they succeeded in opening it and then they found out that they were totally alone. Their antenna was broken, they nevertheless started to transmit signals which were not heard by their ground stations in Moscow, but by fortune somewhere else in Europe. Hence, it took two and a half hours to locate them and to transport emergency materials.

The two Soviet minisheets on this page issued in 1965 and 1980 show the propaganda version of Voskhod (as a fantasy collar and thimble craft) with no airlock, designed by the Lesegri team and the Fifteenth Anniversary true version painted by Leonov himself.

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As they were found in a very remote area it took a whole day to rescue them and the cosmonauts had to stay in their cabin overnight at a temperature of minus 20 degrees. That was not pleasant as their suits were soaked wet. They made a fire, undressed, squeezed their suits, tore them apart and clothed themselves in the driest parts.

Let’s Celebrate 25 years of the A.S.S.S. - born in 1988

To stay outside the cabin during the night was impossible because of the fear for bears and wolves in the deep forests like this. The next day they were found by man on skis, but still could not go, as it was essential to chop down an area for a helicopter. That’s why they stayed one more night in the woods, but now with plenty of warm clothes and in a hastily assembled log-cabin. The next day they were first transported to Perm and from there to Tyuratam.

The world was not informed about these events for many years. They only heard that the landing system was switched on 46 second too late. A film of the space walk overshadowed further difficult questions.

Cosmos 110 Another Voskhod was launched on February 22nd 1966 under the name Cosmos 110. On board were two dogs Veterok and Ugolyok.

The were recovered safely on March 16th except with the same health problems as also cosmonauts were suffering on longer flights.

End As I stated at the beginning, thereafter the Voskhod programme was cancelled in favour of the Soyuz programme. Thus, the scheduled flights 3 to 6 did not go ahead. Accordingly a flight with a crew of two female cosmonauts also was sacrificed.

In spacecraft a number of risks are taken for granted. After all most cosmonauts were cool test pilots used to sudden dangers, but as admitted by the cosmonauts, the Voskhod craft was the most dangerous ever flown and it may be a miracle that no real accident was noted.

Literature http://en.wikipedia.org Voskhod 2 www.astronautix.com Voskhod 2 www.svengrahn.pp.se The Voskhod 2 mission revisited www.svengrahn.pp.se The flight of Vostok 1, what a surprise www.airspacemag.com The nightmare of Voskhod 2 www.youtube.com Spacewalk Voskhod 2 mission www.zarya.info Voskhod programme www.spacetheworld.com Voskhod – the Russian spaceship

1995—MIR/Shuttle First Rendezvous The first American shuttle to rendezvous with Mir was STS63 in February 1995, significantly with a Russian cosmonaut on board. Col. Vladimir G. Titov of the Russian Air Force had commanded the unsuccessful Soyuz T-8 mission to Salyut 7 in April 1983 and the record breaking Soyuz-TM4 to Mir in 1987/8, spending 366 days in space and he was the second Russian cosmonaut to fly on the shuttle.

The primary objective of the mission was a rendezvous to test procedures to be used in the June 1995 of MIR with Atlantis. However in addition to carrying Spacehab-3 Discovery carried the SPARTAN-204 deployable astronomy satellite, the Cryo Systems experiment, the Shuttle Glow Experiment and Orbital Debris Radar Calibration Spheres.

This shuttle was also the first to be piloted by a woman, Eileen Collins, (then 38) making her first ever flight. (And—Cocacola was available chilled from a fountain on board the first time !!)

Thereafter there was a series of visits including long term stays on Mir by Americans and this new international partnership was inevitably reflected in stamp issues: e.g.

Russia 1992 SG 6358/9 and 1995 SG 6539/40;

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