Astronaut Alan Shepard Letter that he wrote to his parents is our blog topic today given on this day April 9, 1959 NASA introduced America’s First Astronauts for Project Mercury.

Here we have a letter written by him just a few months prior to being chosen to be one of the seven astronauts.  Can you recall where you have written a letter to a family member or friend about something you applied for before it took off and was achieved?  

With it being National Letter Writing Month perhaps there is something coming up that you are anticipating and it would be great to go ahead and take a few minutes to share by pen and paper and get into the mail today!

Astronaut Alan Shepard Letter

There is an article from August 2011 about Astronaut Alan Shepard Letter that he wrote to his parents, on January 29, 1959, set to be auctioned off for $80,000.  The article includes images of the handwritten letter along with the cancel on the envelope.   Fast forward and there is a September 2011 article that announces the Astronaut Alan Shepard Letter sold for $106,000.

The article included “Mr Livingston said the auction will include other Shepard items, including training gloves and a signed school scrapbook, but none are as historic as the letter written just before he volunteered for the space program.”

The image upper left is of 2011 U.S. stamp recognizing the 50th Anniversary of First Manned Spaceflight which recognized two historic events – this one shown for Shepard’s Historic Mercury flight and the other stamp in the pair was for the Messenger Mission, full details here.

Thank you for joining me today.    Here’s to a great weekend ahead including writing that letter!

Anchors Aweigh,