Florida paid tribute to astronauts and earlier explorers by putting a space shuttle and a Spanish galleon on commemorative quarters marking its entry into statehood.
Gov. Jeb Bush announced results on Thursday from three weeks of online voting to choose among five designs for the 25-cent pieces. Voting began 11 days after the shuttle Columbia broke apart while re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven crew members.
The winning design shows a space shuttle and a 16th-century Spanish galleon with the inscription “Gateway to Discovery.” It honors Florida’s status as the home of the shuttle fleet that launches from the Kennedy Space Center as well as the site of early exploration by Spanish colonialists.
It was one of two designs featuring the shuttle, and the outpouring of grief over the loss of the Columbia astronauts made it likely one of those two designs would win. The other superimposed the spacecraft over an outline of the state, with the inscription “America’s Spaceport.”
Voters cast more than 424,000 ballots to select the design, which will go to the U.S. Mint as part of the “Fifty State Quarters Program” begun in 1999. The mint is issuing five series of quarters a year honoring the individual states in the order they ratified the U.S. Constitution or joined the Union.
Florida was the 27th state to join in 1845, and its quarters will be issued in 2004.