Parkes Cover

This commemorative envelope features images of the radio antenna at Parkes, New South Wales, Australia. 64 meters in diameter, Parkes was the world's second "big dish" and inspired the design of NASA's Deep Space Network. It has made many important discoveries in radio astronomy, and has also been used to track spacecraft such as Apollo, Giotto and Galileo. Parkes was instrumental in relaying television images of the first moon landing in 1969 (dramatized in the hilarious and touching -- but somewhat fictionalized -- 2001 movie "The Dish"). This envelope's date of issue (1986) marks several major milestones for Parkes:

• The 1986 rendezvous with Comet Halley by the European Space Agency's Giotto probe.
  
• The 25th anniversary of manned space flight (1961-1986).
  
• The 25th anniversary of the Parkes dish itself, which was opened in 1961.