New U.S. Postal Service Stamps Feature Iconic NASA Webb Images
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The other stamp, a Priority Mail stamp, features an image of the Pillars of Creation captured by Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). Webb’s look at this familiar landscape, which was first made famous by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, shows pillars flush with gas and dust, enshrouding stars that are slowly forming over many millennia. The Pillars of Creation is set within the vast Eagle Nebula, which lies 6,500 light-years away.
These new stamps join a Forever stamp issued by the U.S. Postal Service in 2022, featuring an artist’s digital illustration of Webb against a background of stars.
The U.S. Postal Service stamps honor Webb’s achievements as it continues its mission to explore the unknown in our universe and study every phase in cosmic history. Webb has already pulled back the curtain on some of the farthest galaxies, stars, and black holes ever observed; solved a longstanding mystery about the early universe; given us a more detailed look at the atmospheres of planets outside our solar system than ever before; and offered new views and insights into our own cosmic backyard.
More About the Mission
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
NASA Headquarters oversees the mission for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages Webb for the agency and oversees work on the mission performed by the Space Telescope Science Institute, Northrop Grumman, and other mission partners. In addition to Goddard, several NASA centers contributed to the project, including the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston; Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama; Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley; and others.
MIRI was developed through a 50-50 partnership between NASA and ESA. JPL led the U.S. efforts for MIRI, and a multinational consortium of European astronomical institutes contributes for ESA. George Rieke with the University of Arizona is the MIRI science team lead. Gillian Wright is the MIRI European principal investigator.
The MIRI cryocooler development was led and managed by JPL, in collaboration with Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, California, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
To learn more about Webb, visit:
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