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  [Petition] USPS to honor New Horizons in 2015

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Author Topic:   [Petition] USPS to honor New Horizons in 2015
Robert Pearlman
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Posts: 42985
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 02-01-2012 02:19 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Robert Pearlman   Click Here to Email Robert Pearlman     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
collectSPACE
Petition pushes Pluto probe postage stamp

Twenty-one (21) years ago, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) issued a stamp depicting the now on-again, off-again planet Pluto with the inscription "Not Yet Explored." Now, the team behind NASA's first mission to the last planet wants to correct that record with a stamp of their own.

cspg
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Posts: 6210
From: Geneva, Switzerland
Registered: May 2006

posted 02-02-2012 02:52 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for cspg   Click Here to Email cspg     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
And if the mission fails?

Robert Pearlman
Editor

Posts: 42985
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 02-02-2012 03:16 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Robert Pearlman   Click Here to Email Robert Pearlman     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
If you recall from last year, the USPS had already produced 30 million postage stamps honoring MESSENGER as the "First Spacecraft to Orbit Mercury" before the probe entered orbit in March 2011.

That stamp wasn't released to the public until May, but USPS officials told collectSPACE that regardless the outcome of the mission, the stamp would have still gone forward.

New Horizons will fly by Pluto, so regardless if it successfully sends back data or not, it will still be the first man-made object to approach that dwarf planet and is in fact already the closest spacecraft to have ever done so.

DChudwin
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Posts: 1096
From: Lincolnshire IL USA
Registered: Aug 2000

posted 02-04-2012 06:56 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for DChudwin   Click Here to Email DChudwin     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Besides signing the petition, letters suporting the New Horizons stamp can be sent to the committee which chooses U.S. stamp topics:

Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee
c/o Stamp Development
U.S. Postal Service
475 L’Enfant Plaza SW, Room 3300
Washington, DC 20260-3501

Robert Pearlman
Editor

Posts: 42985
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 03-13-2012 09:14 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Robert Pearlman   Click Here to Email Robert Pearlman     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
MSNBC's Alan Boyle writes on his blog, the Cosmic Log, about the final push for Pluto's postage stamp.
More than 11,000 people have signed an online petition to honor NASA's mission to Pluto and other denizens of the solar system's icy rim with a commemorative U.S. postage stamp — which is a fine way to celebrate the 82nd anniversary of Pluto's planetary coming-out party.

"I'm pretty happy," said Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute who is the principal investigator for NASA's New Horizons mission. New Horizons is due to fly by the dwarf planet in 2015, and Stern is among the leading supporters of the stamp campaign.

"A lot of stamps get 1,000 petition names, and they're very happy with that," Stern told me. "Still, I'd rather have 12,000 than 11,000."

Tuesday marks the 82nd anniversary of the announcement of Pluto's discovery by Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, and it also marks a turning point for the petition drive. Stern said he and his colleagues are now turning their attention to the preparation of a formal proposal that will be submitted to the Citizen Stamp Advisory Committee next month.

LM1
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Posts: 667
From: New York, NY
Registered: Oct 2010

posted 07-07-2015 09:09 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for LM1   Click Here to Email LM1     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
This may be a good time to resurrect the Petition for a New Horizons stamp in 2015.

Robert Pearlman
Editor

Posts: 42985
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 07-07-2015 09:38 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Robert Pearlman   Click Here to Email Robert Pearlman     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
The USPS received and reviewed the petition for a New Horizons stamp in 2013. There was even a brief time in 2014 when it seemed like the petition had been successful (and then it was not).

When I spoke to New Horizons' principal investigator Alan Stern last week, he said he was still optimistic that the USPS would choose to honor the mission sometime after the flyby was proven successful.

During my call with Mary-Anne Penner, the U.S. Postal Service's acting director of stamp services, she said there were no plans for a stamp that she could share but invited our readers to continue submitting their ideas to the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee. I'm not sure another petition is merited but certainly individual letters cannot hurt.

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