posted 09-17-2016 08:09 AM               

Space Cover #384: STS-1 and STS-2 Thirty-Fifth Anniversaries

On April 12, 1981, the NASA space shuttle made its maiden flight, STS-1, followed exactly seven months later by STS-2 on November 12. This year marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of those two historic flights that so successfully and spectacularly began the 30-year, 135 shuttle-flight program that ended in 2011.

STS-1 achieved many spaceflight firsts, highlighted by being the first test flight of a new spacecraft to carry a crew, and ending with a gliding, wheeled landing unlike all previous manned orbital flights ending by parachute.

STS-2's flight basically duplicated STS-1's, with a flight of 37 orbits and landing at Edwards AFB, CA, although shortened from a planned five days because of a fuel cell problem. Also STS-2's flight was the first time that a manned space vehicle returned to space for a second time.

The top cover above marks the first Space Shuttle flight and is canceled at KSC for launch; Houston for Mission Control; and Edwards AFB for Columbia's landing. The bottom cover was located in the Mobile Launcher Platform on the launch pad at the time of the STS-1 launch.

These two covers mark the STS-1 and STS-2 flights and were canceled at KSC for the launches and Edwards AFB for the landings. They have each flight's crew patch/mission emblem as a cachet.

The top cover marks STS-2's rollout to the launch pad and both launch and landing, with a Rockwell Space Division Stamp Club rubber stamp cachet and two newly issued stamps commemorating the Shuttle's first flight. The bottom cover is double canceled at KSC and marks both the STS-1 and STS-2 launches.