Could it stamp a cancel on the most expensive stamp anywhere?

Russia's Post Office Aboard the Space Station

Is Russia's Progress freighter the latest postal delivery van?

For a mere (no pun intended) $20,000 to $30,000, you will be able to send a letter up to Russia's new International Space Station post office and back, according to a new firm being set up by Rosaviakosmos, the Russian space agency, to sell the stamps.

While $20,000 or $30,000 may sound like a rather dear price for a postage stamp, you must remember it costs Rosaviakosmos mucho dinero to keep up its part of the space station effort. And all proceeds from sales of the ISS space mail stamp will be ploughed back into the effort.

Here are some examples of their overhead:

$10,000-20,000 to deliver a kilo of cargo to the ISS

$60,000 to return a kilo of cargo to Earth

$18,000-19,000 for an hour's work by the ISS crew

Letters with the ISS space mail postal stamps will be sent up to the station, where they will receive cancellation marks and be sent back down to Earth

The Russians suspended their lucrative space tourism service after the Columbia disaster in February 2003.

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Learn more about space station activities:

Interfax (in English)
Interfax story on postage to ISS for $20,000
Russian Space Agency (in Russian)
Russia's Space Tourists
NASA International Space Station assembly
NASA Space Shuttle Launch Schedule
NASA Mission Archive
NASA Mission Chronology
NASA Mission Summaries
Seven Astronauts Lost in the Shuttle Columbia
6,000 Flags — Remembering Sept. 11, 2001
Second Anniversary of Human Residency of the ISS