The 50th Anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's Space Flight and the Launch of the First Spececraft to Venus, Bulgaria

I came across a post on FB today which reminded me what day it was (one of the times when FB is actually useful for something).

Quoting that post:  On this day, 51 years ago, it was said that Yuri Gagarin, was killed in a mysterious plane crash, just seven years after his historic flight. Gagarin and his instructor were killed. The circumstances were unclear and the accident was hushed up for days. Documents declassified 50 years later say the most likely cause was a sharp manoeuvre to avoid a weather balloon. Many many questions remain, nonetheless.

Well I guess we will never really know the truth, and even if we do, that can never bring back someone to the living. Gagarin lived for a very short while unfortunately, but he will always be remembered and cherished!

Just this past weekend I did a short trip to Sofia, Bulgaria's capital and paid a visit to the philately store :D And among else, got myself this issue from 12th April 2011, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Yuri's flight into space.

It also features the launch of the first spacecraft to Venus (Venera 1), which was launched by the Soviet Union on February 12, 1961 and flew past Venus  (some 100.000 km from it), but I guess that is considered a success too for those times, esp. since unlike the previous attempt, when its sister ship even failed to leave the orbit of Earth.

Views of our Planets, USA

After some weeks of silence, here I am back again with this amazing cover featuring one of the latest fantastic sets issued by USPS, showing the planets in our Solar System. I have had these for quite a while now as a cover picture on this blog, and someone (read Bryon), interpreted that as "Ana wants these" - well I don't say that wasn't right, but I will refrain from changing that cover picture and post my other hidden desires out there :D

Anyways, I think this post comes right on time to celebrate one of the latest NASA's achievements, that is Juno the spacescraft arrived at Jupiter 5 years after its launching and is now orbiting the biggest planet on our Solar System! Amazing, no?
If you feel like it, you can read more about it here at Juno's website.

As for the stamps, I must say I kinda miss Pluto in such context.., poor thing =/

Well, with or without Pluto, I am simply delighted to have this set in my collection! Thanks so much Bryon!! :)

Issue Date: May 31, 2016

The 35th Anniversary of the First Space Shuttle Launch, Spain

You probably know that one of the topics I lose my mind for, is space and here comes a whole sheet of this year's Correos commemorative issue for the 35th Anniversary of the launching of Columbia.

On 12 April 1981 the first space shuttle, Columbia, was launched. It orbited the Earth 36 times and returned home two days later. There were two crew members, the astronauts John W. Young as ship commander and Robert L. Crippen as pilot.

This launch marked various milestones in the history of space exploration. Apart from being the first shuttle launch, it was the first flight of its kind to be launched without any prior test flights.

The mission's main objectives were to check that the shuttle was working properly, to climb to the orbital altitude with no problems, to return to Earth and land without having any setbacks. All of these objectives were successfully achieved.

But Columbia's story ended in tragedy on 1 February 2003. After 15 days in orbit, the shuttle was coming back to Earth. During take off, it had been hit by a heavy object that caused serious damage, although this was not apparent at the time. When the ship was re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, the port wing broke off, causing the ship to lose control and break up in the air. The ship's seven crew members lost their lives and all future space missions were immediately cancelled in order to investigate the causes of the accident.

The stamp issued to commemorate the 35th anniversary of its maiden flight is in the shape of the shuttle. It shows the ship against the background of the Earth seen from space, together with the moon. The text reads "35th anniversary of Columbia, the first space shuttle's launch" alongside the NASA logo. It has the appearance of a space orbit and can be read both horizontally and vertically.

Thanks to Herbert for this gift!

The 50th Anniversary of Man's First Flight into Space, Bosnia and Herzegovina

On this day, April 12th, 55 years ago, Gagarin did what no one before him had managed to achieve - he became the first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth.

Unfortunately, I have no stamps commemorating the 55th anniversary, but I have two FDCs issued to commemorate the 50th anniversary, so here they are...

the first one was issued by Croatian Post Mostar (if you are a bit familiar with postal administration, you are familiar then with the division of the postal administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina)

the second FDC also comes from Bosnia and Herzegovina, but this time from the Bosnia and Herzegovina Postal Administration.

Well, without wanting to sound politically incorrect, I included both of these since they both represent Gagarin and for the time being, these are the only FDCs I have with him :)

Tonight is also Yuri's Night - the World's Space Party celebrated throughout the world...I hope I will attend the one organized here in Skopje, if my allergy symptoms somehow ease until tonight.

Happy World's Space Day everyone! And drink one to Gagarin tonight :)

The 30th Anniversary of the First Manned Moon Landing, Angola

After a few months' absence here comes a new post! Yay! Hurray! (well, I hope it is a 'yay' reaction from your side anyways :P)
In general, for the past months I've been away from everything postal related...a number of reasons for that, if you're curious, you can get some vague info here in my postcards' blog post (in order to avoid repeating myself)
However, I've been trying slowly to get back on track with stuff...and this is one of the spots that still hasn't been taken care of with regards to that. Being that it is Sunday, I recalled today is the day for Sunday stamps and ain't there a better excuse to post something? :)
Just that I realized that while I was gone, some things have changed and Sunday stamps has a new host, that is Violet...so this means that I've been gone for a really long time since I've missed something like this.
Anyways,. I would like to thank Viridian for all the hard work she had put up while hosting SS, I really enjoyed being part of it! And thanks to Violet for taking over and giving us the chance to still enjoy the Sunday stamps ;-)

So this come-back post is supposed to portray some famous people or portraits...maybe the entire post doesn't really fulfill the conditions but the first stamp surely does, and that's the one I wanted to show you...the rest are for your enjoyment :)

I am showing some Angola stamps today, issued in 1999 to commemorate the 30th Anniversary of the First Manned Moon Landing, which happened on 20 July 1969, when Apollo 11 took Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the Moon. The above stamps shows Armstrong...I don't know why they hadn't issued a stamp depicting Aldrin too though. Maybe cos Armstrong was the one who set foot first. There was another guy, Michael Collins, who piloted the command spacecraft alone in lunar orbit until Armstrong and Aldrin returned to it just under a day later for the trip back to Earth. So he does deserve some recognition within this issue as well I think but anyways.
Armstrong unfortunately ain't among us any more...he passed away at the age of 82, in 2012.

So as I said, that would be my stamp to contribute to to today's Sunday stamps edition. But I simply couldn't leave out the rest of the stamps in the set, so here they are:

Here you have the SBS-4 Satellite on the right and the left is the Space Shuttle Columbia.

In the sheet above you can also see a number of various satellites displayed, while in the one below is our magnificent and mystic Solar system.

I can say nothing else but just that this entire issue of stamps is G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S!
Hope you liked them as well! :)

for more famous people on stamps, click on the link below...and enjoy it! :)

Violet's Sunday Stamps

Space Stamps, USSR

well, Sunday Stamps is a good opportunity to make a come back here as well after "raising the postcards' blog from the dead" first. And ever since I read the topic for today, the notion of USSR got stuck in my head, dont know why...after seeing the entries today I realized how narrow my thinking was, but simply, the thought of Russia or another former communist country, made me think of USSR and USSR only...and even with particular stamps in mind. In the end I thought I should maybe take a look at my Russian stamps too, but in the end I decided to go with my gut feeling and make myself happy and content...going with something else would have left this feeling of 'something missing' inside me and that's no good now, is it?

well, some of you know how hyped I get with EVERYTHING space related, so that's why I was also so anxious today to show a number of USSR stamps that are space related...plus I have never shown USSR stamps here before, so here is the first and I hope not the last time :)

I'll start with these two stamps issued in 1962...at first glance they may seem the same but actually there is a difference in colour at the right side...one is more on the violet tone, while the other one is something between bluish/greenish. These two depict the first manned flight to space, launched on April 12 1961 - and the stamps were issued one year later, to commemorate the one year anniversary.
Тhis set comes in the perforated version -an imperforated one can be obtained as well.

another set where the two stamps only differ in colour a bit. Issued in 1962 as well, representing Vostok 2, a Soviet space mission which carried cosmonaut Gherman Titov into orbit for a full day (or 25 hours to be more precise) on August 6, 1961 to study the effects of a more prolonged period of weightlessness on the human body. Perforated version.

Still in 1962, this time an imperforated version of a set of three stamps. These represent Vostok 3 and Vostok 4. Vostok 3 was a spaceflight of the Soviet space program intended to determine the ability of the human body to function in conditions of weightlessness and test the endurance of the Vostok 3KA spacecraft over longer flights. Cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev/Андриян Николаев (featured on the top right stamp) orbited the Earth 64 times over nearly four days in space, August 11–15, 1962. Vostok 4 was launched a day after Vostok 3, and this was the first time that more than one manned spacecraft were in orbit at the same time. Pavel Popovich (Па́вел Попо́вич)was on Vostok 4 (featured on the top left stamp)

Here is the lovely Sputnik, which was the first artificial Earth satellite, launched on October 4, 1957. The stamp commemorates its fifth anniversary.

and two more stamps from 1962, issued to commemorate all the Vostok Spaceflights, and in Russian you can read "Glory to the Conquerors of Space".

now, here is something from 1963..a fantastic se-tenant stamp if you are asking me! There is another single stamp in the set, but unfortunately I do not have that one. This is another issue to commemorate both Vostok flights going in the space together, Vostok 5 and Vostok 6.  A thing worth noting here is that Vostok 6 was the first human spaceflight mission to carry a woman into space, that is cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova.

two stamps from a set of three issued in 1964 - yeah, i miss the third one and what really bothers me is that I'm missing the stamp Gagarin is featured on...sniff ;-( but one cant have it all...
anyway, this set was issued to commemorate the Cosmonautic day and here you can see the Sputniks on the first stamp and the Space station Mars 1 on the second one.

a great stamp from 1965, representing the first space walk, done by Alexey Leonov (Алексе́й Лео́нов) on March 18, 1965.

and just one more set for today, again from 1965, again three stamps issued to commemorate the Cosmonautic day, and here you have from left to right: a Soviet space achievements monument, then a Sputnik sculpture in Moscow and at the end K. E. Tsiolkovsky's monument (Константи́н Циолко́вский), who was a Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory.

well, that would be all...I know it got a bit lengthy but since they were all topic-related, I couldnt just pick one.
A big hug goes to my mum who has collected these over the years while she was really into it ❤

and now it's time to check out what others have come up with for this communist-countries day :)

have a lovely Sunday!

Moonlanding, Paraguay

I almost skipped today's Sunday Stamps...but having in mind today's subject, I felt I would regret if I don't post these stamps, so I'll try to squeeze in a short post here :)

these Paraguay stamps were issued in 1970 and come in a set of nine (so as usual, I must miss a stamp or two with such awesome issues!) On one of the stamps Im missing, you can also see President Kennedy, next to Wernher von Braun, who is also featured on the first stamp at the top.
Von Braun was German–American rocket scientist, aerospace engineer, space architect, and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany during World War II and, subsequently, in the United States and they call him the "Father of Rocket Science".
He was the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, the superbooster that propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon (which is also portrayed on the first stamp).

The following (second row) stamp shows the first astronauts' landing on the Moon on July 20, 1969 (done by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin). And I think it is worth to mention the name of Michael Collins, who was the command module pilot for Apollo 11 and while Armstrong and Aldrin were having a walk on the Moon, Michael was orbiting the Moon.
The stamp next to it also shows the first men on the Moon, taking soil samples and the Apollo 11, while the third stamp in the second row shows the departure of Apollo 11 from the Moon.
The first stamp from the third row shows the landing of the Module, the one in the middle shows the  Lunar Module extraction, while the last  stamp of the ones I have is called Command/Service Module / Lunar Module.

Well, space has always fascinated me, and I wonder if one day we'd all be able to get on a spaceship and have coffee on some other planet...or whatever their specialty may be :)

For more space travels and natural phenomena, click on the button below...and Ill try later to visit everyone, including the pending ones from last Sunday...sorry, but life sometimes interferes