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Post-Challenger Shuttle-Launched Missions

Magellan

The surface of Venus is completely obscured from visible observation, whether from Earth-based telescopes or orbiting cameras, by its thick cloud coverage. The NASA/JPL SEASAT mission had demonstrated that a microwave radar imager (Synthetic Aperture Radar-SAR) could penetrate the clouds, and hence could provide high resolution images of Venus. Magellan was designed to carry a SAR into Venus orbit, and through repetitive imaging over a certain section of the orbit while the planet turned under the orbit, provide a map of more than 70% of the Venus surface.

After providing, in fact, a map of more than 95% of Venus, Magellan performed aerobraking maneuvers that lowered the orbit, making the spacecraft path more sensitive to the Venus gravity characteristics, and allowing more refined measurements of this gravity field.

The Stamp Club issued a Magellan launch (32a) cover on the occasion of the launch of STS-29 on May 4, 1989, which carried the spacecraft and its IUS upper stage into Earth orbit. The cover design was the last produced by Don Burcham (his 31st), and continued the incorporation of the project logo into the launch cover design. This cover was produced in Pasadena, with an extra 100 cancelled at KSC. Since this mission was the first for a JPL spacecraft to be launched by the Shuttle, the interest in this cover was greater among the manned space cover collectors. A small number of launch covers were kindly autographed by the Shuttle crew as a courtesy to the stamp club.

Magellan Venus Orbit Insertion (62a) was accomplished on August 10, 1989. The club cachet for that event was designed on a MAC personal computer by Penny Crafton from artwork concepts developed by the author. This was the first example where the camera-ready art for a club cachet was generated by a personal computer- a great savings in time and effort, so long as there is an expert and willing person to do the computer work. This consists of scanning in the art into a data base, recomposing and improving the print image, adding lettering, and generally creating an attractive 3" X 3" piece of art.

Galileo

Intended to be launched on The Space Shuttle Challenger in April of 1986, the Galileo project launch was derailed by the Challenger disaster for more than 3 years, and the trajectory of the eventual mission required a Solar System odyssey that would take it in to Venus, bouncing back to sling-shot around Earth not once but twice, and finally into the long trip to Jupiter. This was all necessary to provide the orbit energy lost when the planned upper stage (Centaur) was prohibited from Shuttle flights after the disaster.

The club covers for Galileo launch (21a) aboard STS-34 on October 18, 1989 include a special two-color rendition of the STS mission logo, for which the art was again created on the MAC. This time, the complete piece of art was decomposed into two ready-for-printing masters, one for each color, and precisely registered, all through the computer graphics capability. These covers were cancelled in Pasadena, but again 100 were cancelled at KSC, with the KSC STS logo cancel.

The encounters along the way to Jupiter were celebrated by means of a "generic" cover which was enhanced for each event by the appropriate rubber stamp describing the event. This full color cachet, which features the Galileo spacecraft, was the brainchild of Jim Stoker, who designed it from a project photo. He then organized the processing for each of the first events, including the all-purpose insert, which indicates the position of the spacecraft along its route.

The first event commemorated was Earth 1 flyby (21b), which occurred about a year after launch. (The first target for Galileo was Venus, accomplished by a swing inwards toward the sun before being slung back out towards the outer solar system. Curiously, the club neglected to commemorate this event, except by rubber stamp servicing of requests from various collectors from all parts of the world. This motivated Jim to set up this generic scheme). The orbit resulting from the Venus encounter went outside the radius of Earth's orbit, and the subsequent pass back along the inward leg met the Earth, where Earth 2 Flyby (22a) provided another gravity adjustment to the orbit sent Galileo further out.

The Galileo orbit was fine-tuned to allow close encounters with two asteroids in this pre-Jupiter mission. Asteroid Gaspra (22b) was encountered between the 2 Earth flybys, and Asteroid Ida (23b) was met after Earth 2.

Another event, which was fortuitous, occurred about a year before arrival at Jupiter. Galileo was close enough to Jupiter that useful images could be obtained of the planet, and was able to record the segments of the fragmented Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashing into Jupiter (23a). This was unique because the segments impacted the planet out of site of view from Earth's telescopes. A unique cachet was prepared for this event, which coincided with the JPL 50th Anniversary/ Apollo 11 25th Anniversary Open House (see special events and First Day of Issue sections for more about this event).

The Jupiter Encounter events were commemorated with full, four color cachets based on the art work of Ken Hodges, a well known artist of space scenes (who designed numerous US Postage stamps, including the future mail delivery stamps.) The Jupiter Probe Release (24a) occurred about 5 months before Jupiter Probe Entry (25b) and Galileo Jupiter Orbit Insertion JOI (25a) occurred in December of 1997. This began the orbital phase of the mission, in which a total of 34 orbits of Jupiter would yield 32 close encounters of the major moons Ganymede, Callisto, Europa and Io, and one of the smaller moon Almathea.

For the moon encounters in the 2-year prime mission, a second single-color Generic cachet (Ganymede Encounter G1 (26b), as an example) was designed, which was also used for the first Europa Encounter of the Galileo Extended Mission (GEM) (31a). The design of the cachet for these eleven moon encounter covers (see Club Cover Collection web page for list) was done by club member John Eyraud and the author. No printed cachets were produced for the rest of the extended mission encounters, but the rubber stamp cachet service produced covers for all of them. (See chapter 12 - the Rubber Stamp Cachet Service - for more details)

Ulysses

In the 1970's, JPL studied a mission with the European Space Agency where two spacecraft would be launched by Shuttle into orbits to Jupiter. At Jupiter, the spacecraft would use the gravity assist of that massive planet to slingshot out of the plane of the ecliptic- on to the north celestial pole and the other to the south- and would move along these orbits in toward the sun, passing close by the sun through the ecliptic, and thus obtaining science of the solar poles (which can't be seen from in the ecliptic.

This "solar polar" mission was reduced to one spacecraft when the US spacecraft part was cancelled. The partnership persisted, however, with NASA providing the launch, and JPL providing the mission operations, navigation, and science to the mission. The October 6, 1990 Ulysses launch (33a) of STS-41 was commemorated with a cacheted cover depicting the Ulysses project logo in two colors- again produced by computer graphics.

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