Robert T. McCall | Space artist, 90

Robert T. McCall, 90, an artist whose fervor for space exploration found expression in his six-story-tall mural at the National Air and Space Museum and two postage stamps canceled on the moon, died of heart failure Feb. 26 in Scottsdale, Ariz.

When NASA in 1962 decided to enlist artists to promote its mission, Mr. McCall was one of the first three chosen.

He went on to create hundreds of vivid paintings, from representations of gleaming spaceships to futuristic dream cities where shopping centers float in space. His most famous image may be the gargantuan mural, showing events from the creation of the universe to men walking on the moon, on the south lobby wall of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.

Or it might be his painting showing a space vehicle darting from the bay of a wheel-shaped space station, which was used in a poster for Stanley Kubrick's landmark 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

He also created mission patches for astronauts; the many paintings that hang in military buildings from the Pentagon to the Air Force Academy; and the enormous mural at the Johnson Space Center in Houston showing the progression of the American space program.

He designed more than a dozen stamps for the Postal Service, and a set was ceremoniously canceled on the lunar surface by David Scott, commander of the Apollo 15 mission.

Mr. McCall's great disappointment was that he never made it to space himself. When NASA began a program to take people from other professions on shuttle missions, he was on the list. But after teacher Christa McAuliffe died when the space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, that program was ended. - N.Y. Times News Service