New Stamps at the Kennedy Space Center

A new series of stamps will soon be released. These stamps will feature some of the most famous Astronauts in history and interesting historic events. They will be first released on May 4, 2011. Take a look:

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Mercury Project and MESSENGER Mission Stamp Ceremony on May 4 at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex

Celebrating 50Years of U.S. Spaceflight...

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. (April 28, 2011) – NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex will host the U.S. Postal Service First-Day-of-Issue dedication ceremony of the Mercury Project and MESSENGER Mission 44-cent First-Class Forever^® Stamps on Wednesday, May 4 at 2:00 p.m.

© Kennedy Space Center

Featured speakers participating in the ceremony recognizing the 50^th anniversary of Americans in space include Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter, Mercury/Apollo astronaut Alan Shepard’s daughters, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, Kennedy Space Center Director Robert Cabana, NASA Deputy Director of Planetary Science Jim Adams and U.S. Postal Service Vice President of Finance & Planning Stephen Masse. The dedication ceremony will take place next to the seven-story Redstone rocket, situated in the iconic Rocket Garden, similar to the one Alan Shepard piloted to become America’s first man in space.

© Kennedy Space Center

Two historic events will be featured on the commemorative stamps. One stamp salutes NASA’s Project Mercury, America’s first manned spaceflight program and NASA astronaut Alan Shepard’s historic flight on May 5, 1961, aboard the spacecraft Freedom 7. The other stamp draws attention to NASA’s unmanned MESSENGER Mission, a scientific investigation of the planet Mercury. On March 17, 2011, MESSENGER became the first spacecraft to enter into orbit around Mercury. These two historic missions frame a remarkable fifty-year period in which America has advanced space exploration through more than 1,500 manned and unmanned flights.

The Project Mercury stamp depicts Shepard, the Mercury capsule Freedom 7 and the Redstone rocket launching. The MESSENGER Mission stamp depicts the MESSENGER spacecraft in orbit around the planet Mercury.

Visitors and ceremony guests may purchase the Project Mercury and MESSENGER Mission stamps from the U.S. Postal Service from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Visitor Complex.

Admission to the dedication ceremony is included with regular admission to Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. For more information, please call 877-313-2610 or visit www.kennedyspacecenter.com/stamp-ceremony.aspx.

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All these info and pictures are subject to the copyright of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. All rights reserved. © 2011. The Kennedy Space Center.