Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Stories from Tony Reichhardt

Lower Manhattan at one-meter resolution. The IKONOS satellite took this picture in 2000, when such detailed imagery was new on the market, and the Twin Towers (left, center) were intact.

Swarms of small, orbiting cameras are coming. To watch.

Spysats for Everyone

Finding Luca’s Leak

Astronauts re-create the scary water leak that cut short a recent spacewalk

None

How to Talk to Aliens

Start by figuring out the patterns in their language, says SETI researcher John Elliott.

None

Japan’s Kirobo Robot Brings Cute to the Space Station

The 13-inch astro-bot begins a year-and-a-half tour in orbit

A Nagasaki temple after the second atomic bomb was dropped.

The Second Atomic Bomb

The crew of Bockscar dropped the Fat Man bomb over Nagasaki just three days after the first nuclear weapon hit Hiroshima.

Looking through a telescope just became old-fashioned.

Hey, What’s That Satellite Overhead?

These handy websites and smartphone apps eliminate the guesswork

Still from Atlas Human-Powered Helicopter - AHS Sikorsky Prize Flight.

AeroVelo Wins Human-Powered Helicopter Prize

A team from Toronto finally manages to keep a pedal-powered vehicle in the air for over a minute

VIDEO: Rocket Crash in Kazakhstan

Scary scenes from the Baikonur launch site, where a Proton rocket veered off course this morning

None

50 Years After Tereshkova

Russia’s first woman cosmonaut, and its next

The Flight of Shenzhou-10

China’s final mission to the Tiangong-1 space station

None

Thought-Controlled Drones and Pizzacopters

The Domino’s delivery guy of the future may wear electrodes on his head.

Unmanned X-47B Launches from a Carrier

For the first time in history, a combat aircraft with no pilot onboard took off from an aircraft carrier at sea

None

Chris Hadfield’s Space Oddity

Somebody had to do it

None

Lockheed’s Mom

Flora Haines Loughead was a journalist, farmer, miner, and mother to two pioneers of the aviation history

None

Crowdsourcing Mars

Space exploration and the limits of charity

None

The X-51 Ends on a High Note

The Waverider soars, thanks to the longest scramjet burn ever

Flying at last: an AJ26/NK-33 engine gets hoisted into place.

Moon Rocket Engines Reach Space At Last

It only took 40 years, but engines originally designed for the Soviet N-1 moon rocket finally left Earth yesterday

Artist's conception of Kepler-62f, which may, according to theory, have a solid surface and liquid water.

Kepler’s New Planets: Is Anybody Home?

SETI researchers have already listened in for alien transmissions

An artist's rendering of the proposed asteroid retrieval mission.

Five Reasons to Like NASA’s Asteroid Retrieval Mission

So it’s not the Moon or Mars. Get over it.

Still from Laser Weapon System (LaWS).

Drone vs. Laser

Guess who wins

Page 10 of 35