Pluto-Bound Spacecraft Gets Review for US Postage Stamp

The grassroots mission to land a Pluto-bound planetary probe on a postage stamp has caught the attention of postal authorities, the team that organized the campaign announced on Monday (Feb. 25)."Recently, we were issued a letter from the [United States Postal Service] USPS informing us that the New Horizons mission stamp proposal will be submitted for review and consideration before their Advisory Committee!" wrote Con Tsang, a research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, in an e-mail addressed to supporters and posted on the NASA mission's Facebook page. "We have cleared the first hurdle!"Last February, Tsang began a petition on the Change.org website urging the USPS and its Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee to honor the first mission to Pluto with its own postage stamp. Backed by the New Horizon's flight team, including the mission's principal investigator Alan Stern, the petition collected more than 12,000 signatures by the time the effort ended on March 13, 2012.