STS-8 flown cover – signed by four

Extremely rare STS-8 Official Flown USPS Cover – Hand-Signed by 4 of the 5 Crew Members"
This authentic postal cover was flown aboard Space Shuttle Challenger during the STS-8 mission (August 30 – September 5, 1983), making it a genuine piece of spaceflight history. It is hand-signed by four members of the five-person crew—an exceptional rarity due to the crew’s prior agreement never to sign all flown covers together. This decision has made any multi-signed flown examples highly sought after by collectors, and covers signed by nearly the full crew are exceedingly scarce.

Hand signed by Dale Gardner, Guion Bluford, Richard Truly and Dan Brandenstein.

Background
For the STS-8 mission, NASA partnered with the United States Postal Service to carry official USPS covers into space, each postmarked aboard Challenger and later re-entered to Earth. This was the first shuttle mission to carry an African American astronaut, Guion S. Bluford Jr., and it marked the first night launch and landing of the Shuttle program. Before the flight, the crew agreed that they would never all sign any of the flown covers to prevent market flooding and preserve the collectible value. As a result, no flown covers exist with all five autographs. This makes any example signed by four crew members—just one short of the complete set—an exceptional and highly desirable rarity in aerospace philately.