Sorry, I couldn't resist with the goofy
Muppets reference
Anyway, NASA's planetary mission to Pluto- New Horizons, has a numismatic and philatelic connection so read on...
http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-102808a.html"On the way to see the governor -- it was a long drive, I think it may have been three to four hundred miles -- we got to talking about what we might do to get him a little more personally interested in the mission, other than just invite him to the launch," said Stern. "We came upon the thought, why don't we fly a State Quarter of Florida?"
As Stern reasoned, they would launch from Florida, some of the parts of New Horizons had been built there and the State Quarter just happened to have a space theme. They both liked the idea a lot but upon searching their pockets, came up empty for a quarter to illustrate their point to the governor.
"Toward the end of the briefing, I mentioned to [Governor Bush] that we really wanted to fly a Florida State Quarter but couldn't come up with one and it was due to our poor planning because we had only thought of it today," Stern recounted. "And he said, 'Well, I've got plenty!'" and with that ran out of the room and when he came back, he had a roll of the quarters. "He said, 'Fly these!'"
"Since we needed a counter balance to [the Florida State Quarter], we decided to fly a second State Quarter. We picked Maryland because that is where the spacecraft was built. And because we had so many people back in Maryland at the Applied Physics Lab and at Goddard, it was easy for someone to ship us a quarter really quick."
In total, there were nine mementos chosen to fly on New Horizons.
"Why nine mementos? I bet you can guess," said Stern while announcing all nine during a recent dedication of the spacecraft's replica now hanging in the Smithsonian.
The ninth was a 1991 U.S. Postal Service stamp issued as part of a set celebrating the exploration of the planets. Under a depiction of Pluto, the stamp was inscribed "Not yet explored".
"Pluto may not have been explored when that stamp set came out, but we were going to conquer that," Stern said.
"I wanted to fly it as a sort of 'in your face' thing."
Posted 10/29/2008 5:58 pm
