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Air & Space Magazine

The solar system beckons: Cassini spacecraft view of Saturn, looking back toward the inner planets

Think Space Exploration Isn’t Moving Fast Enough? You’re Not Alone.

Playing it safe won’t get us to the stars

Valentina Tereshkova as seen by flight controllers during her Vostok-6 flight. Mission controllers could downlink live TV pictures of the cosmonaut in orbit.

Valentina Tereshkova’s Journal Sheds New Light on Her Historic Spaceflight

The first woman in space had code words to inform the ground of problems, from sickness (“palm tree”) to engine failure (“elm tree”).

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A Gift From the Heart

Last Christmas, I got the chance to fulfill my daughter-in-law’s childhood dream

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Watch Where You Step on the Moon

Should the Moon become a United Nations International Park?

A night-time view from the International Space Station.

An Astronaut’s View of Earth Could Change Us All

The “overview effect” profoundly changes the way space travelers view our planet. How can everyone experience it?

Many readers have been sending us letters about our November 2013 story, Buy Your Plane at Penney's by Paul Glenshaw, regarding their own memories of the ERCO Ercoupe. Reader Nick Proferes send in this wonderful picture of his father, Nick Proferes Sr., sitting in his brand new Ercoupe at the Washington-Virginia Airport around 1950. My father enlisted in the [U.S. Army Air Corps] at the age of 17 to learn to fly, winding up at Langley Field until WWII broke out and he got involved in radar and aircraft navigation systems across the north Atlantic. I still have a photo of him sitting in his newly acquired Ercoupe around 1950 at Washington and Virginia Airport at Bailey's Cross Roads, Virginia where there were a number of these aircraft parked on the field. I remember well flying with him in the plane from an age of around 6 when I could barely see over the cowling. He owned it for a number of years before selling it to buy a Stinson Voyager. I recently checked the FAA records for the tail number but sadly it appears to be no longer flying as the number has been re-assigned. I remember the plane as being rather slow but simple and a whole lot of fun. Image courtesy Nick Proferes

Ercoupe Memories

A reader’s photo of his father with his brand-new airplane.

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Gladiolus Express

Florida flowers get an airlift.

Best Children’s Books of 2013

This year’s best aviation- and space-themed books for young readers

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Roadside Aviation

Forget the Quilting Hall of Fame. Plan that next road trip around some aviation pit stops.

The Expedition 37 crew caught a glimpse of the Aurora Australis—the Southern Lights, while flying over Tasmania last week. Image: NASA

Australis Glow

The aurora down below, from up above.

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New Asteroid Lands on List of Earth-Threatening Objects. Don’t Get Excited.

You can worry when the Torino score gets to 5

The Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft attached to its rocket, just before being closed inside the launch shroud.

India Launches Its First Mission to Mars

With hopes to become the first Asian nation to explore the Red Planet

When art meets aviation

Still Life with Airplane

The Galileo spacecraft was already far from Earth when problems cropped up with its antenna.

When the Error Message Comes From 50 Million Miles Away

…spacecraft engineers have to get creative.

A source of national pride, the Tupolev Tu-104 jetliner drew a crowd at a 1959 national economy exhibition in Moscow, and at all its public appearances.

In 1956, the Soviets held first place — briefly.

Jet Race

On March 18, 1910, Harry Houdini made three flights in his Voisin, the third lasting about three and a half minutes.

The Hunt for Houdini’s Airplane

Amateur detectives have found clues to the fate of the magician’s biplane.

“If you can drive a car, you can fly an airplane.” ERCO began selling the spin-proof Ercoupe from department stores in 1945 by marketing the vision that every family (represented in the publicity shot) could own one.

For a few magical years, it looked like every family would own an airplane.

Buy Your Plane at Penney’s

The Flying Pancake (at Floyd Bennett Field, New York, in the early 1940s).

Why There Will Never Be Another Flying Pancake

The end of the Vought V-173.

The author strides from a F-35B after taking it for a spin at Florida’s Eglin Air Force Base last March.

The Making of a Joint Strike Fighter Pilot

Welcome to the fifth generation

The McCook Field test pilots in 1924.

The First Test Pilots

At old McCook Field, the art of flying became a science.

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