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Air & Space Magazine

Firewatching From Space

A fire burns in Grampians National Park in Australia on January 19, 2014.

Artist's view of the Philae lander anchored to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Europe’s Comet Lander Wakes Up, Takes Aim

Rosetta zeroes in on a rock from the far reaches of our solar system

Cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy carry the torch in space, November 2013.

The Olympic Torch in Space

The most remote stop on the road to Sochi

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New Astronauts On Tour

Agenda for NASA’s latest astronaut candidates: Get in shape, learn Russian, fly T-38s

Dyson Spheres: Still Missing, Maybe Impossible

Searching for the ultimate alien artifacts

A Boeing employee in Huntsville, Alabama shows his pride.

A Generation Gap Among Aerospace Workers?

A recent machinists’ union vote may point to differing priorities for younger and older members.

Sam Graves is part owner of a Vultee BT-13 Valiant, which he displays at the Wing Nuts Flying Circus in Tarkio, Missouri.

Aviation’s Man in Washington

Congressman Sam Graves represents two groups: the citizens of Missouri’s 6th District and private pilots.

When Alan Shepard strode out to the Mercury-Redstone rocket in May 1961 (above, right), NASA was scarcely integrated. By 1965, at the time of the Selma-to-Montgomery, Alabama civil rights march (above, left), the Huntsville rocket center employed several black engineers.

How NASA Joined the Civil Rights Revolution

Integration came to the nation’s space agency in the mid-1960s.

In Iceland, at one end of the 10,000-mile-long Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a visitor could see new crust being born as magma oozes up from the interior.

Planet Earth: A Guide for Alien Scientists

If astronomers from another world sent a probe to study ours, where would you tell it to land?

This Jenny belongs to Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in New York.

Letters From a WWI Jenny Pilot

In 1918, my grandfather’s wish was simple: “Give me a Lewis gun in the cockpit of a fast fighter plane, and I know that I’d be satisfied with life.”

Cosmologists study the large-scale structure and evolution of the universe -- here imagined as it evolved (reading left to right) from 900 million years after the Big Bang to today.

The Planck Telescope: News From the Dawn of Time

Will a new picture of the universe’s first light overturn a theory that has reigned for 30 years?

An Israeli armored brigade approaches the Golan Heights to relieve forces under Syrian attack on day two of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. U.S. fears that the Soviet Union would send troops to assist Egypt and Syria sparked a DEFCON level increase.

Go To DEFCON 3

These are the steps to follow right before you hear “Incoming!”

Grand Prize Winner: “This MiG-15 was one of the last aircraft to depart the old St. George Airport for the new airport, which is located five miles to the southeast. The MiG-15 is owned by the Western Sky Aviation Warbird Museum in St. George, Utah.”

1st Annual Photo Contest Prize Winners

Presenting the First Air & Space Photo Contest Winners

Tough-guy F-15s flank a grown-up F-16 over Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, in 2007.

The Outrageous Adolescence of the F-16

The Viper was small, fast, and in your face

NASA’s 2013 astronaut candidates, nicknamed the “Eight Balls,” pose in front of a mockup of the Orion capsule at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, last August. From left: Tyler Hague, Andrew Morgan, Jessica Meir, Christina Hammock, Nicole Mann, Josh Cassada, Anne McClain, and Victor Glover.

Astronauts Waiting for a Ride

Now that the space shuttle’s gone, what do astronauts do?

In 1949 the Library of Congress acquired 303 glass plate negatives developed by the Wright brothers. Some of these prints, including the iconic image above, are in the National Air and Space Museum.

The Wright Brothers’ First Flight Photo, Annotated

A careful study of the shot taken in December 1903 at Kitty Hawk shows the moment of aviation’s birth.

A Sikorsky HO4S Tugbird drags a ship around the ocean off Florida.

Hey, Let’s Use a Helicopter as a Tugboat!

That was the basic idea behind Project Tugbird.

The author’s Lockheed P-3C Orion in Hawaii in 2000, with Combat Aircrew One. “You can clearly see the grime and dirt, especially on the nacelle,” he says.

I Got Those Old Beat-Up Orion Blues

It’s not easy for a 1950s propeller airplane with grease smudges to turn heads at an airshow.

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Clementine – The Legacy, Twenty Years On

Remembering the first spacecraft to globally map the Moon

“Creepy-Crawly” Tarantula Nebula

Here’s a new wonderful image from the Hubble Space Telescope: This new Hubble image is the best-ever view of a cosmic creepy-crawly known as the Tarantula Nebula, a region full of star clusters, glowing gas, and dark dust. Astronomers are exploring and mapping this nebula as part of the Hubble Tarantula Treasury Project, in a bid to try to understand its starry anatomy.

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