Belated happy anniversary, Sputnik; Antarctic post office welcomes four new employees

I'm still not up to my preferred blogging speed, but I thought I had better check in. Can I offer a partial excuse that I was on vacation in Switzerland for three weeks, enjoying cultural attractions in Bern, the mountain landscape of the Wallis Alps in Saas-Fee, and the lakeside pleasures of Ascona and Lago Maggiore. Not to mention food and drink in all of those places! 

Allalin Glacier, Wallis, Switzerland

Oops, that trip is fading into the past, so now I also have to blame watching the baseball playoffs. My son Sam and I saw the hometown Phillies knock the Braves out last Saturday. I'm also rooting for my childhood team, the Yankees, so if they meet in the World Series, I'm not sure what I will do.

October 4 was the 65th anniversary of the launching of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite ever launched into orbit around the Earth. This NASA web page on Sputnik is informative. Below is a cover recently added to my collection that commemorates the first satellites of both the USSR and the USA. The postmark date of Dec. 31, 2018, was 60 years after the end of the IGY. It mentions the Belgian ionospheric scientist Marcel Nicolet who was the secretary general of the IGY. I have been searching for a cover signed by him or some other interesting memorabilia related to him, but so far, no luck. Do you have any leads?

My IGY cover #US 245. The stamp is Scott US 4502, issued as a 44¢ forever stamp on March 25, 2011. According to the Mystic Stamp website, this second “Celebrate!” stamp was designed by USPS art director Phil Jordan, working with neon artist Michael Flechtner.

Along with satellite launches, probably the other most noteworthy scientific aspect of IGY studies, and the other area of research that most captivated public interest, was the exploration of Antarctica. The Guardian had a recent story on the four women -- Mairi Hilton, Lucy Bruzzone, Clare Ballantyne and Natalie Corbett -- picked by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust to run the world’s most remote, coldest post office (also Britains's most southerly post office) on Goudier Island in Port Lockroy, off the Antarctic Peninsula as part of the British Antarctic Territory (BAT), a place with no permanent residents. They will also be in charge of monitoring the island’s colony of 1,500 gentoo penguins; hence, Port Lockroy is also known as the Penguin Post Office. Around 70,000 pieces of mail are posted each year to over 100 countries.

The location of Goudier Island is shown with the arrow on the map below:

British Antarctic Territory government website

The post office and the penguins are shown in this BBC news clip:

Below are two of my covers commemorating the 30th anniversary of the IGY, each franked with a set of four stamps issued in 1987 by the British Antarctic Territory (Scott 141-144).

British Antarctic Territory cover (IN 041 in my collection) with stamps Scott 141-144. The 24p stamp is captioned "Port Lockroy" (in a very small font). The cachet shows the Antarctic Peninsula in teal, the location of Port Lockroy, and the general area of the BAT, but strangely does not indicate the full latitudinal extent of the BAT, which extends from 60°S to the South Pole in latitude, and from 20°W- 80°W in longitude.

British Antarctic Territory cover (IN 042 in my collection), registered, with an orbiting satellite shown in the cachet 

While I am at it, my latest IGY cover postmarked from Antarctica is shown below:

IGY cover US 247 in my collection

It is not the prettiest cover, rather misaligned, but  it is postmarked from the Amundsen-Scott IGY South Pole Station in 1958 during the IGY, and sent to Palmyra, Pennsylvania, outside of Hershey, about 25 miles from me. It bears the slogan Operation Deep Freeze. The air mail postage stamp used is Scott C39, issued in 1949 for the increase of the airmail postage rate from 5¢ to 6¢.  The DC-4 Skymaster in the image was a four-engine propeller plane that was used during World War II, for the Berlin Airlift, and later as a passenger airplane and for the delivery of airmail.