posted 10-04-2026 09:23 AM               

Space Cover 876: SPACEPEX

The space cover this week is from the annual SPACEPEX philatelic exhibition held in Houston. The envelope is hand cancelled May 5th, 1971 and celebrates the tenth anniversary of US Manned Spaceflight, Alan Shepards MR-3 flight on the same date in 1961. It bears a sticker cachet from the Manned Spacecraft Center Stamp Club and the entire envelope is made from a cut and folded official NASA planning chart.

Specifically this cover is made from an Apollo 10 Translunar/Transearth Trajectory Plotting Chart. These charts were published and used by NASA to show the lunar position during key mission milestones and the trajectory of the Apollo spacecraft from the earth to the moon and back. The front of this cover shows the moon's position at the time of launch on May 18th, 1969. A complete chart from Apollo 10 can be seen below, these charts were made for all the Apollo lunar missions. The charts are 24 inches by 20 inches in size. Event covers from the Apollo missions can also be found cancelled on these chart envelopes.

What also makes SPACEPEX covers from 1971 interesting is that they can be found in several different configurations. Some have sticker cachets and some have printed cachets. Looking closely at the covers themselves, you will notice that they are made from many different types of Apollo mission charts. Below are covers from Apollo 11 to 14, with Apollo 14 having been the last mission to take place before SPACEPEX in 1971.

I've enjoyed finding covers from many SPACEPEX shows that followed, below are examples from 1972 through 1984. SPACEPEX 1972 is notable in that this was the first space themed pictorial cancel used in Texas, with Webster, being home to the Manned Spacecraft Center. I've included two first day of use covers from 1972 below, one with a sticker cachet and one with a printed cachet on a NASA lunar chart envelope.

SPACEPEX pictorial cancels and cachets have celebrated different events over the years.

• 1971 – Tenth anniversary of first US manned spaceflight
• 1972 – First Texas pictorial space cancel
• 1973 – Skylab, name change to Johnson Space Center
• 1974 – ASTP, international cooperation
• 1975 – ASTP, which launched during the show
• 1976 – Space Shuttle, a new era in space
• 1977 – Space Shuttle, cachets in red (shown) and blue
• 1978 – 75th anniversary of powered flight
• 1979 – Tenth anniversary of first manned lunar landing
• 1980 – Spaceweek 1980
• 1981 – US in space, two decades of achievement
• 1982 – Space Shuttle
• 1983 – Spacelab, international cooperation in space
• 1984 – Fifteenth anniversary of first manned moon walk

I'd love to see any SPACEPEX covers you have in your collection.

Also, does anyone have a SPACEPEX 1971 cover made from an Apollo 8 chart?

posted 10-04-2026 11:32 AM               

First off, the 1970's SpacePex covers. Back then the JSC Stamp Club (JSCSC) was very active, and two of the main linchpins were Matt and Eunice Radnofsky. Matt was a NASA employee, a materials engineer who came to JSC with the original Space Task Group from Langley. In fact, Matt is on-record as having surfaced concerns with the Apollo pure oxygen atmosphere at/above atmospheric pressure before that became the driver behind the Apollo 204 Fire.

Both he and Eunice were stamp collectors. And both were very active in producing JSCSC covers and in fostering the Apollo crew insurance covers. The tracking map covers most certainly were put together by Eunice. I don't know how she decided which charts to use for which covers, maybe random.

Fast forward to the late 1980's/early 1990's when yours truly was in the JSCSC. At the time, I wasn't very diligent about saving SpacePex covers so my coverage is hit and miss (mostly miss). You can see the 1990 and 1995 SpacePex covers above. In both cases, I'm pretty sure that the cachet and postmark for each was designed by Gordon Ducote who shouldered most of that effort then. And the autographs that you see were attendees at Space Unit meetings that we had in conjunction with those two shows.

For 1991, the theme of SpacePex was "Wings In Space", chosen because both Europe and Japan had announced spaceplane projects, we didn't know that Russia's Buran had been parked by that time, and Shuttle was flying, so the future of wings in space looked very robust. I designed the SpacePex '91 postmark, a knockoff of the Southwest Airlines wings logo, and Gordon did the cachet. But alas, I can't find my copy of that cover.

posted 10-05-2026 09:56 AM               

Spacepex '77 would have been an excellent event to have attended with Puddy the main speaker at the awards banquet. He was also a space cover collector and a friend to us collectors.

posted 10-05-2026 07:06 PM               

There is another depiction below, but it's not a stamp club cachet cover as the others are, but rather an invite and a certificate of participation for SPACEPEX 1971. It looks like the stamp show was at the MSC auditorium with an exhibitors banquet at The King's Inn right across from the Houston space center. But what really intrigues me on the certificate is a signature that I am very happy to see of NASA pioneer and legendary Apollo flown lunar cover creator Dr. Matt Radnofsky, president of the MSC Stamp Club and of Rand Philatelic Bureau. Both Matt and wife Eunice were leaders in astrophilately throughout the Apollo program and early shuttle era.