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Air & Space Magazine

LIFE magazine cover, September 21, 1959. Top row, left to right: Jo Schirra, Louise Shepard. Middle row: Annie Glenn, Rene Carpenter, Marjorie Slayton. Bottom row: Trudy Cooper, Betty Grissom.

The Astronaut Wives Club

Dishy gossip from a new book about the wives of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts

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Thought-Controlled Drones and Pizzacopters

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

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Globemaster Reflections

A C-17 waits out the weather in South Carolina.

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Can’t You Just Move the Space Station?

When a science team asked to move the ISS for one of their experiments, they had to get five nations to agree on the engineering, timing, and risks.

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Launch Afterglow

A rocket’s glare as it lifts-off.

Ron Evans’ daughter Jaime, wife Janet, and son Jon rejoice as Apollo 17 splashes down in the Pacific on December 19, 1972. Behind Jon is Janet’s sister, Marian Bell.

Jan Evans recalls how it was for the families of moon voyagers in the Apollo era.

The Astronaut’s Wife.

Lowell Thomas Jr. threads his Helio Courier through the Alaska Range peaks called the Moose’s Tooth. Terrain like this and treacherous weather gave Alaska the highest aviation accident rate in the country.

Alaska’s Crash Epidemic

How technology and an FAA regional office ended it.

During a tranquil moment at Lake Hood, the world’s largest seaplane base, a Piper PA-14 skims a watery runway

Where airplanes have floats, and everybody flies.

Water World

With Mount Hunter looming over his right wing, Paul Roderick, director of flight operations for Talkeetna Air Taxi, flies over his favorite place to ski.

The Pilots of Mount McKinley

For 50 years, the world has reached the mountain on airplanes from one small town.

Alaska and the Airplane

For a century, each has shaped the other.

An artist places us on the surface of Gliese 876 d, a planet in or near the habitable zone around a red dwarf star.

Earth-Like Planets Could be Right Next Door

Astronomers estimate that billions of habitable planets are orbiting red dwarf stars. What would it be like to live there?

After serving in the Korean War, the USS Boxer went on a tour of the Pacific in 1955, carrying a pair of F9F-5 Panthers, Grumman Aircraft’s first jet fighter for the U.S. Navy. Panthers flew most of the Navy’s combat missions in Korea.

Panthers at Sea

U.S. Navy Panthers weren’t highly evolved, but they could shoot. And they were air conditioned.

By the time Atlantis was launched on the last space shuttle mission in July 2011, NASA had already shed most of its engineers.

Where Have All the Shuttle Engineers Gone?

To new jobs, some odder than others

While the Apollo lunar module is a real test vehicle, it has been modified to look like the Apollo 11 lander for display.

What’s Real, and What’s Not?

At the National Air and Space Museum, some artifacts are more genuine than others.

In 1940, $16 million and change could buy 225 Republic P-47s.

When Republic Aviation Folded

A historian rescued a lone document from the company’s files.

In August 1952, the author’s father stopped in Dallas while ferrying a Sikorsky HRS-2 from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to the Marine Corps base in Santa Ana, California.

Contact!

What happens when helicopters get a little too close.

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Asteroid Haircuts

Earth will get close(ish) shave from a big asteroid Friday afternoon.

The LB-30’s black underside made it extremely visible to U-boat lookouts.

Paint it White

How a simple change in color scheme helped RAF bombers defeat Hitler’s U-boats

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Alien Minerals Found in Lunar Crater – Film at Eleven!

Computer models in science can be useful — until you start believing in them.

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Gun Ready

A machine gun airplane waits at Souther Field in 1918.

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