posted 12-07-2025 09:47 AM               

Space Cover 835: NASA Official Envelopes

NASA, as with any large company or government entity, has pre-printed envelopes with their return addresses and/or logos. NASA has literally hundreds, if not a thousand or more, of these "official" envelopes which can become a whole collecting area on its own. The NASA "official" envelopes can be found with and without the NASA logo of the period.

These envelopes come in all shapes and sizes as anything mailed from that NASA location could be of different size and shape. They also have address locations from around the world as there are specific NASA facilities in many nations worldwide. Postally used official envelopes like this obviously exist for all of the main NASA facilities and have changed over the years with introduction of zip codes, name changes like Manned Spacecraft Center to Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, and the department creations at those facilities, and so on. The earliest NASA official postal stationary would have been right after NASA was operational on October 1, 1958, in Washington, DC – would like to see one of these! There is official stationery for the NASA predecessor, National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), too.

The most represented institution of NASA to be included as part of the printed return address is Goddard Space Flight Center. This is because the Mercury era Manned Space Flight Network and the follow-on Spaceflight Tracking and Data Network were/are managed by NASA Goddard. These stations are global in nature.

Also, military installations worldwide were part of spaceflight tracking/support and would have NASA Goddard representatives stationed at the facility. The NASA "official" envelope shown above is one such envelope, with the return address of the "Goddard Space Flight Representative" and a Post Office Box at Lompoc, California. The representative was working at Vandenberg AFB.

The downside for collectors, as official envelopes do not have postage stamps applied, the majority do not have a postmark to determine the exact date of usage.

Taking on a very ambitious collection quest, collectSpace contributor Pete Sarmiento who retired from Goddard Space Flight Center, is putting together a collection of official NASA envelopes from every NASA site used for the space shuttle. Last I heard from Pete that he was only missing official stationery for ONE NASA site, I believe it was for the representative for the Transoceanic Abort Landing site at Dakar in Senegal.

These official envelopes can also be found with stamps applied to them to receive postmarks. The stamps are applied to cover the "Postage and fees paid by National Aeronautics and Space Administration" printing. These are usually for First Day Covers and specific event day covers.

On a tangent, there are examples of Goddard representatives applying a rubber stamp corner card as well. The example usually seen for this is the "NASA Goddard Network Liaison Office" at Patrick AFB in Florida, and for some Gemini manned missions some were even postmarked on launch day at Kennedy Space Center receiving the official NASA rubber stamp cachet.