Posts Tagged rovers

Astro-philatelics, part 6

Posted by Danielle in Currency & Postage on March 26, 2008

Mars Pathfinder stamp

This is the very first space-related stamp I remember actually buying, just after I got out of high school. The lovely coppery finish doesn’t show on the scan, but it’s a bit metallic ’round the edges.

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Books: After Sputnik

Posted by Danielle in Books & Literature on May 3, 2007

After Sputnik: 50 Years of the Space Age

After Sputnik: 50 Years of the Space Age is a fantastic book, showcasing not only space artifacts but some of the items influenced by the space age as well. I can’t wait to purchase it, and many a future Themes article seed is nestled in the pages!

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first human-made object to orbit the Earth. This single act jump-started a new era in history — broad effort to explore, learn about, survive in, utilize, and fully understand the implications of humanity’s first steps beyond Earth. As much as any other twentieth-century undertaking, the achievement of sending humans and machines into space has transformed and shaped the way we live. From Sputnik to today, from heroic first journeys to the everyday application of space technologies, spaceflight has cut a broad swath through the contemporary experience.

As time marches closer to the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik launch, I expect we’ll see more books of this basic theme popping up.

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World Space Museum spaceflight miniatures

Posted by Danielle in Collectibles on April 5, 2007

I have to preface this by saying that, by and large, all toys, miniatures and models of Japanese origin are awesome. Even “cheap” things (capsule toys, etc) are detailed and quality. I found this set of World Space Museum miniatures on The Space Store/Countdown Creations, but I’d bought one of them in a Japanese supermarket years before, and wished there were more boxes than one! (Now I have a chance to get the rest, at least, the rest of the moon-related ones. I’m particular.)

World Space Museum™ presents a series of incredibly detailed, snap-together model replicas of historical rockets, satellites, landers, and explorers first released in Japan in 2003 now available for the first time in English.

Each model comes with an explanation of the mission and trading cards. (And candy! Maybe they’re leaving the candy out of the description on purpose.) Collect them all!

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Books: Postcards From Mars

Posted by Danielle in Books & Literature on February 19, 2007

Postcards From Mars: The First Photographer on the Red Planet

Postcards From Mars: The First Photographer on the Red Planet is another amazing book I look forward to having on my shelf. The author is the lead scientist for the color imaging from Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, and has this to say in the preface:

My goal in this book is to share the beauty, desolation, grandeur, and sometimes plain old alien strangeness of the [fourth planet from the Sun] Mars, that has been revealed to us through the [Mars Exploratory] Rover [MER] cameras. In editing the enormous number of photographs we’ve taken down to 150 or so [of the best images] included here, I chose images that were representative of different phases of each rover’s journey, and of major scientific successes (or occasionally disappointments) along the way. I’ve included some of the history and the stories behind the [MER] mission [in the text that accompanies the images] and the pictures as well.

Definitely one to pick up, if only to thumb through as you read The Martian Chronicles.

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