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Two stamps marking NASA achievements, decades apart, were unveiled earlier this week in Florida. One features the Messenger spacecraft -- the first to orbit Mercury, still circling after more than six years. The other honors astronaut Alan Shepard, who became the country's first man in space 50 years ago on May 5, 1961.

Now these images will go around the world as postage, and the artwork can be traced to Brooklyn. The United States Postal Service commissioned Boerum Hill artist Donato Giancola to do the work back in 2009. He started with his sketchbook and in about eight months he completed the project as oil paintings, relying on pictures supplied by NASA. He says capturing the essence of Shepard was challenging.

"There's no one particular photograph that you can look at and say that's the one I used. I took a set of eyes, a smile, the characterization of his face from many different images and re-composited that into the likeness that's on the stamp," Giancola said.

Giancola says creating the Messenger image was a bit easier and stands as a tribute to many.

"The stamp of the spacecraft is in a way, a nod to all that technology and all that hard work by the scientists who can't be directly recognized but in some way they are," Giancola said.

The Postal Service turned to Giancola because he had already produced many paintings of astronauts and space. Giancola says he's always been fascinated with science. One of his work's, an 8x7 painting, hangs in the Queens Hall of Science. Most of his other work is book covers for science fiction and fantasy novels.

If you'd like to see Giancola's artwork, he'll be taking part in the annual Atlantic Avenue Artwalk next month. You can also go to the post office and buy the stamps, which are good forever.