Ceremony details for Sept. 8 James Webb Space Telescope stamp

By Linn’s Staff

The United States Postal Service has revealed details of the Sept. 8 first-day ceremony for the James Webb Space Telescope forever stamp.

The ceremony will take place Thursday, Sept. 8, at 11 a.m. at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, 2 Massachusetts Ave. NE, in Washington, D.C.

The ceremony is free and open to the public. A registration form is available from the USPS.

The James Webb Telescope, the largest and most complex telescope ever deployed in space, will be able to study every phase of cosmic history during its expected five-to-10-year mission, according to the U.S. Postal Service.

The telescope is as tall as a three-story building and contains a 21-foot-wide lens protected by a solar shield the size of a tennis court, the USPS said. The telescope’s size required it to be folded inside of a rocket in order to launch.

The stamp shows a digitally created image of the telescope. A picture of a star and distant space taken by the telescope early in its mission appears in the selvage of the pane of 20.

Art director Derry Noyes designed the stamp using existing art by James Vaughan and an image provided by NASA/Space Telescope Science Institute.

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