USPS Celebrates James Webb Telescope With Forever Stamp
The US Postal Service is celebrating NASA's "remarkable" James Webb Space Telescope with a new Forever stamp.
Designed by art director Derry Noyes, the First Class postage stamp launches on Thursday, Sept. 8, with a free public dedication ceremony(Opens in a new window) at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C. Space fans will be able to pre-order the stamp—always equal to the value of the current First-Class Mail 1-ounce price—online starting Aug. 8(Opens in a new window).
The stamp features an artist's (James Vaughan(Opens in a new window)) rendering of the telescope "against a dazzling starscape," USPS said in an announcement(Opens in a new window), describing the background image—a star and distant space captured by the telescope early in its mission—as "brilliantly confirming the perfect alignment of [its] 18 mirror segments."
The world's largest and most complex space science observatory—named after former NASA Administrator James E. Webb—launched the morning of Dec. 25, 2021. One month later, Webb reached its final major milestone when the team remotely deployed a 70-foot sunshield to protect the telescope from the heat and light of the Sun, Earth, and Moon.
NASA recently revealed the first batch of observations collected by the telescope, including a gas giant outside our solar system; a group of five galaxies featuring an active black hole; a nebula that births new stars; and a region of space representing some of the earliest galaxies to form in our universe.
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