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IT Home reported on July 21 that the United Nations Postal Administration issued a set of six miniature stamps and three commemorative stamp albums on July 20, International Moon Day, to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. These stamps show photos of the moon taken by probes from the United States, China, Russia, Europe, Japan, India and South Korea.

According to IT Home, starting from 2021, the United Nations will designate the day when Apollo 11 astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin first landed on the moon as International Moon Day, aiming to raise awareness of the commitment of countries and international space agencies around the world to sustainable lunar exploration. Arti Hola-Meni, Director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, said in a statement: "Today's lunar exploration is ambitious, but we must expand the currently untouched territory in a sustainable way. The United Nations will use its unique convening power to promote the necessary dialogue on the way forward."

The stamps and album will be issued in three denominations, corresponding to the United Nations Postal Administration offices in New York (US dollars), Geneva (Swiss francs) and Vienna (euro). Designed by Rory Katz in collaboration with the United Nations, the stamps reproduce images of six different lunar missions, while the commemorative album features three additional missions. The themes on the miniature sheets include:

• China's first lunar sample return mission, Chang'e 5, launched in 2020

• South Korea's first lunar probe, Danuri, to be launched in 2022

• The first soft-landing lunar probe launched by the United States in 1966, Surveyor 1, preceded the Apollo missions.

• India's first successful lunar landing probe "Chandrayaan-3" in 2023

• Japan's first lunar landing probe "Smart Lander" (SLIM) in 2024

• Smart 1, the European Space Agency's first lunar mission, launched in 2003

The commemorative stamp album further commemorates the United States' Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1969, the former Soviet Union's robotic probe "Luna 2" that achieved the world's first lunar landing on September 14, 1959, and China's probe "Chang'e 4" that achieved the world's first landing on the far side of the moon on January 3, 2019.

In addition to the stamps and stamp albums, the United Nations Postal Administration has designed a commemorative International Moon Day postmark (one per office) and is selling first day covers (stamped envelopes with a postmark from the day of issue). The miniature stamps are limited to 12,000 sets per pair, the Apollo 11 commemorative stamp album is limited to 17,000 sets, and the other two commemorative stamp albums are limited to 18,000 sets each.

Previous space stamps issued by the United Nations Postal Administration include: a set of eight stamps in 2007 commemorating the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Space Age; a stamp issued in 2011 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of manned space flight; two nebula-themed stamps issued for World Space Week in 2013; a stamp issued in 2018 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first United Nations Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space; and a set of six stamps and six commemorative stamp albums issued in 2022 to commemorate Mars missions launched by the United States, China and the United Arab Emirates.