A dear friend of mine recently sent me an envelope full of stamps. He knows of my interest in astronomy and space travel, and rightly thought that I'd like to have them.
I'm no philatelist, but I am familiar with the subject matter of most of these. I've done a little research to try and classify them correctly, although I’d appreciate any help with the translations (I just used Google Translate) if I’ve got anything completely wrong!
I spent a while last night scanning them all as I thought you guys and gals might be interested in seeing them
From EQUATORIAL GUINEA First, a rather gruesome series of six stamps, the subject of which seems to roughly translates to “Those who lost their life in the conquest of space”:
The deaths of ‘Gus’ Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee when fire consumed the cabin of Apollo 1 during tests:
Vladimir Komarov loses his life when Soyuz 1 returns to earth:
Vladislav Volkov, Georgi Dobrovolski and Viktor Patsayev lost their life when Soyuz 11 depressurised:
(cont) - The docking of Soyuz 11 and Salyut 1:
(cont) – The crew of Soyuz 11:
(cont) – Soyuz 11 re-entry:
The next two stamps are from a series entitled ‘Conquest of Venus’:
“Giant telescope project studying the planets”:
Russian Space Station – the starting point for the conquest of Venus:
The final stamp shows Apollo 15 launching a satellite (PFS-1) into orbit around the moon:
From ECUADOR This stamp depicts Soviet cosmonaut Alexey Leonov making the first ever spacewalk:
From HUNGARY This stamp is entitled “Tsiolkovsky’s Space Station Plan – 1903” (from Google: Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky (17 September 1857 – 19 September 1935) was an Imperial Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory. Along with the German Hermann Oberth and the American Robert H. Goddard, he is considered to be one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics. His works later inspired leading Soviet rocket engineers such as Sergey Korolyov and Valentin Glushko and contributed to the early success of the Soviet space program)
This one is entitled: “Luna 9 Arrives At The Moon - 1966”:
The final stamp from Hungary depicts ‘Mars 2’ in Martian orbit (from Google: The Mars 2 and Mars 3 missions consisted of identical spacecraft, each with an orbiter and an attached lander; they were the first human artefacts to impact the surface of Mars):
From LIBERIA The first three stamps show scenes from the mission of Apollo 15:
This single stamp shows Apollo 16 astronauts John Young and Charles Duke aboard the Lunar Rover:
These three stamps show scenes from the Apollo 17:
These final two Liberian stamps from 1973 commemorate the 500
th anniversary of the birth of Nicolaus Copernicus:
From MONGOLIA This stamp shows a (manned) Soviet Soyuz rocket:
This one shows a Saturn V launch:
From PANAMA I think the legend on this stamp is referring to JFK as a major ‘supporter’ or ‘backer’ (proponent?) of (US) astronautics:
This one shows a series of early satellites:
From RAS AL KHAIMAH (one of the United Arab Emirates):
These four depict various stages in the mission of Apollo 10:
These two stamps both commemorate Apollo 11:
This final stamp shows Apollo 12 Command Module pilot Richard F Gordon:
From YEMEN These three depict scenes from Apollo 12:
The next three stamps, under the title ‘Space 70’ show scene of proposed future projects entitled ‘Interplanetary Station’:
The final two, still under the ‘Space 70’ heading are depicting the ‘Conquest of Mars’:
