posted 11-09-2025 10:23 AM               

Space Cover 831: Glow In The Dark

The space cover this week is one of my personal all-time favorites. This cover was created and sold as part of Lunar Voyage Cachets, a running series of Apollo manned mission cachets by Robert G. Rank of Union City, NJ. This one is a launch cover for Apollo 14, machine cancelled at Kennedy Space Center, Florida on January 31st, 1971. It depicts the crew alongside the command module and lunar module in flight. In the upper left corner, it contains a special feature, alluded to by the note in the lower right.

Hold to light for a while, and the moon will glow in the dark

After "charging" the cover with direct light, turn the lights off and you are presented with a spectacular glowing moon. I've inset the glowing moon portion from the SCOTW to the left of the cover image and to the touch it is a raised texture, similar to the velvet cachets produced earlier by Rank. The moon is hard to photograph in daylight and doesn't appear well in scans either.

Amazingly enough though, it still glows brightly even 54 years after it was produced. It is good to be aware that some covers which have been exposed to more light over the years will have reduced brightness, with some retaining none of the original glow.

Rank produced at least two other cachet designs with glowing moons in the Lunar Voyage series, the next was for the Apollo 14 moon landing itself. This cachet again shows the full crew and includes a vignette of astronauts Shepard and Mitchell exploring the surface at Fra Mauro. It is cancelled at Houston, Texas on February 5th, 1971, the date LM-8 Antares touched down on the moon.

The next cachet is for Apollo 15, and marks the launching of a subsatellite from the Command Module Endeavour. The cachet shows the Apollo 15 crew, subsatellite, and states that Al Worden released the spacecraft into lunar orbit on August 4th, 1971, the same date the cover was cancelled at Houston.

It my continued search for glowing moon covers, I've come across several postmark variations created by Rank, a summary of those I have in my collection is provided below. Rank was known to also cancel covers at Cape Canaveral, Satellite Beach, and Titusville, so I'm expecting them to possibly exist from these cities as well.

Apollo 14 launch cachet

• Jan 31, KSC, machine cancel (from KSC visitors center)
  
• Jan 31, KSC, machine cancel (from KSC post office)
  
• Feb 5, KSC, machine cancel
  
• Feb 6, KSC, hand cancel
  
• Feb 9, KSC, machine cancel
  
• Feb 9, Houston, hand cancel

Apollo 14 landing cachet

• Feb 5, Houston, machine cancel
  
• Feb 5, KSC, machine cancel

Apollo 15 subsatellite cachet

• Aug 4, Houston, machine cancel
  
• Aug 4, KSC, machine cancel
  
• Aug 2, KSC, First Day of Issue for Scott #1434-35, Decade of Space Achievement

Do you have other cachets with a glow-in-the-dark feature, or any other postmark variations of the above Rank cachets? Would love to see them!