It’s been a while since I posted a stamp — this one is unusual in that it contains actual meteorite material!

In 2006, Austria Post issued a stamp with an other-worldly rock; this stamp contained 0.03 grams of meteorite dust. The dust came from a 19 kilogram stony meteorite found in Morocco in 2004. The meteorite is composed of olivine, a mineral chemically defined as magnesium iron silicate. The gemstone known as peridot is an example of gem-quality olivine.

The meteorite was crushed into a very fine dust, which was then hand-affixed to the stamp using a special adhesive. The stamp issue, called Mail From a Different World, sold for 3.75 EU (about $5.80 US, today).

(Info courtesy of Stamps of Distinction, found via Dark Roasted Blend.)

Space Block © Bombus Design on Flickr

A friend showed me this terrific decoupage cube, featuring vintage space stamps (looks to be mostly, if not all, Soviet.) Very nice work, I love the overlapping of the stamps and “sides” (stamps folding over onto another face of the cube.)

This turned into an exclusively-art picspam post because I only discovered this artist today, via Andrew Chaikin’s newly-launched blog. The artist is Paul Calle, one of the original artists contracted by NASA to document the space program, illustrator of I think every Apollo-era stamp I own, and the brilliant mind behind the pieces you see here. I’m absolutely captivated by the above, Power to GO — the canvas literally looks like it’s melting from the heat of liftoff.

The above is The Great Moment, a 4′x8′ piece (note: those are FEET, not inches), and the below is better known as a 1969 stamp, First Man on the Moon.

For this, my final installation of the space stamp series, I offer a 1989 (20th anniversary) Apollo 11 stamp from Montserrat, and a 1971 Apollo 14 stamp from Ajman. The colors on the Ajman stamp are just beautiful.

Today is the 23rd anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. These stamps are from Mali and were issued for the tenth anniversary of the disaster, in 1996.

This 1966 set of stamps hails from the Yemen Arab Republic and celebrates the Gemini 6 & 7 missions. (Rest of the set can be viewed at here.)

This stamp from the Maldive Islands has gorgeous artwork of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project linkup between the United States and Russia in 1975.

We’re just starting the International Year of Astronomy, and in a similar vein, these Australian stamps from 1992 celebrate the International Space Year .

These awesome stamps from Fujeira focus exclusively on Apollo 16, as seen through television stills. I really like the look, it’s very unique.

These stamps were issued by Japan in March 2008 to commemorate the Astronomical Society of Japan’s centenary. They feature (among other things) the planets, the Subaru Telescope, and the Hayabusa probe, which rendezvoused with near-Earth asteroid 25143 Itokawa, sampled it, and is scheduled to return to Earth in 2010. Information from here.