— France has eight new postage stamps commemorating the sixth and latest generation of Europe's heavy-lift rocket.

Each of the eight stamps depict the Ariane 6 at various stages of its launch. The Ariane 6 entered service for the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2024 and has since flown seven times, as operated by Arianespace.

"La Poste honors Europe's Ariane 6 rocket using the symbolic medium of stamps," reads an article on the ESA website. "ESA's Ariane program began in the 1970s to provide Europe with independent access to space."

The set was released by La Poste de Guyane, the service's regional branch located in French Guiana, from where the Ariane 6 rocket launches at the Guiana Space Center, also known as Europe's Spaceport. Among the flights depicted on the stamps include the Ariane 6's flight launch, which carried a test payload and suffered an upper stage failure and the rocket's' first night flight, which deployed a second-generation polar-orbiting meteorological satellite into space.

The eight stamps each carry a face value of 1.52 Euros and are intended for sending mail to and from France and its overseas departments, Andorra and Monaco. La Poste first issued the stamps on April 27, but it was not until Monday (July 27) that they were featured on ESA's website.

The Ariane 6 stamps come on a two-sided sheetlet with information about the rocket program and an illustration showing how the Ariane has evolved from its first iteration to its present day configurations. The pamphlet also reproduces ESA's Ariane 6 mission patch on its reverse.

France is not alone this year celebrating the Ariane 6 on a commemorative. In June, Switzerland's Swissmint issued a new 20-franc silver coin honoring the country's contributions to ESA. The reverse of the coin shows the upper section of an Ariane 6, including the payload fairings that were developed and manufactured by Beyond Gravity Switzerland.

La Poste previously featured spaceflight on its stamps in 2017 and 2018, when it released two sets of stamps marking the flight of France's tenth citizen into orbit Earth and the country's third crewmember to live on the International Space Station. The "Retour sur Terre" ("Return to Earth") set of four stamps was timed to coincide with astronaut Thomas Pesquet's touch down after 196 days in space.

A year later on the anniversary of his landing, the postal service issued a booklet of 12 postage stamps reproducing photos of Earth that were taken by Pesquet during his stay on the ISS. The subjects included snow in Russia, Paris in France, meanders of the Colorado River in the United States, a road in a no man's land of ice in Canada and a coral reef and volcanic island in French Polynesia.

The La Poste Ariane 6 eight-stamp collector set is available for 15€ (about $17 US) on the postal service's website.