Stamp Licker: Space

To celebrate the total solar eclipse across much of North America, I organized a solid handful of swaps, offering a postcard with photos from the 2017 total solar eclipse and the new eclipse postage stamp from Canada Post and requesting pretty much any astronomy-themed postcard/stamp (eclipses, planets, even weather phenomenon). Since today marks one month since the eclipse, I thought I'd share the postcards I sent (pictured above) and some of the postcards I've received in return... check out the page dedicated to these postcards here!

Ontario, CAN - Apollo 15 Lunar Landing Postcard

This postcard features a photo from the Apollo 15 (1971) mission to the moon and today I learned about some interesting negative publicity the mission received when it came to light that the crew had carried a number of postal covers into space without prior authorization and had received monetary compensation (which they later returned). Indeed, the covers were confiscated by NASA and only returned under threat of a lawsuit in February 1983. Interestingly enough though, also in 1983, NASA sent 260,000 postal covers to space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger for the STS-8 mission, splitting profits made by selling the covers with the USPS. Now, per the US Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) § 1214.602, all mementos aboard NASA missions must be approved and "[i]tems such as philatelic materials and coins that, by their nature, lend themselves to exploitation by the recipients, or create problems with respect to good taste [...] will not be approved for flight."