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Air & Space Magazine

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught this solar flare in action in 2017. Researchers believe that coronal mass ejections after such flares are the source of bursts of radiation.

Storm Chasers in Outer Space

Scientists hope to develop an early-warning system for hailstorms of radioactive particles.

John and Annie Glenn with President John F. Kennedy in 1962.

A Prize-Winning Song Written by Two Utah High Schoolers Celebrates the Enduring Love of Annie and John Glenn

Annie Glenn died this week, two years after finalists in an NEA songwriting competition paid tribute to her and her astronaut husband.

The first hard-shelled animals, like the trilobite at center, needed a lot of oxygen to move around and make a living.

Long-lasting Oxygen in Earth’s Early Atmosphere May Have Jump-Started the Evolution to Animal Life

It’s the stuff that higher organisms need.

The smaller white stars in this Hubble Space Telescope image of the central region of our galaxy are of the same type as the Sun. But our local star may be unusual in its ability to foster life.

How Common is Life, and Are We Unique?

Two recent papers prompt a revisiting of the Fermi Paradox.

Salt nodules (whitish rocks in the foreground) are the last outpost of life in the hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert (see hammer for scale).

Viruses Thrive Even in one of Earth’s Toughest Deserts

To prosper here, their microbe hosts live in the rocks and draw water from the atmosphere.

Social distancing is hard when you’re sitting three feet from your co-pilot.

Piloting Through the Pandemic

What it’s like to fly airplanes—when nobody is flying.

This Norden M-9 is installed in the B-17G Shoo Shoo Baby, assigned in 1944 to the 91st Bomb Group based in England. All Nordens had a rubberized eyepiece, which often created a black circle around the bombardier’s eye.

Norden Bombsight

It tested more impressively than it fought, but its marketing hit the bullseye.

Stromatolites today in Shark Bay, Australia—living fossils of the first microbial communities on early Earth.

The Case for Past Life on Mars Gets Stronger

But how much evidence is needed until we can say there’s proof?

None

Apollo 13: New Photos From Old Movies

Still far from home, the Apollo 13 astronauts photographed Earth during their long, harrowing trip back from the moon.

Relive the Drama of Apollo 13 in Real Time, As It Happened

A new multimedia site creates the historic mission 50 years later.

Biological? Post-biological? Something in between? What is humanity's future?

Reaching the Singularity May be Humanity’s Greatest and Last Accomplishment

Should we be searching for post-biological aliens?

Alexei Leonov during history’s first spacewalk, March 18, 1965.

Alexei Leonov’s First Spacewalk Wasn’t Quite as Dramatic as We Thought

Newly released documents cast a different light on one of the most recounted stories in space history.

This photo of a dashing Flight Lieutenant Neville Bowker inspired the nose art that has become inescapably linked with the Flying Tigers.

How the Curtiss P-40 Got That Wicked Shark Grin

The Tomahawk was not the first airplane to wear its trademark nose art.

Boeing conducts an MQ-25 deck handling demonstration at its facility in St. Louis. The U.S. Navy intends to procure eight of the carrier-based drones by 2024.

The Navy’s Drone Fleet is Growing

Aircraft carriers are being readied for next-generation warfare that relies on unmanned aerial vehicles.

The replica arrived in pieces at the USS Midway Museum and required more than 2,000 hours to assemble.

This Film Replica of the Douglas Devastator Could Pass for the Real Thing

Made for the movie Midway, it looks like it could have flown the historic mission.

Carrying their parachutes, Women Airforce Service Pilots (left to right) Frances Green, Margaret Kirchner, Ann Waldner, and Blanche Osborn pass a line of Boeing B-17s at a U.S. Army airfield in Columbus, Ohio, where in 1944 they were training to ferry the bombers.

War Stories, New and Old, at the National Air and Space Museum

Revitalization also means commemorating World War II in unfamiliar ways.

Hermann Göring’s speech in the Air Ministry building was delayed for 63 minutes by an air raid. When he resumed, the UPI reported, his speech “was uninterrupted by applause.”

World War II’s Strangest Bombing Mission

The RAF knew how to cut the power on propaganda.

The author in her red, white, and blue minidress in 1970, patiently explaining to Expo ’70 visitors that the American spacecraft on display, unlike those of our rivals, were real.

When Apollo Went to Japan

At Expo ’70, I was the happy ambassador for the U.S. Space program.

Staff dismantle the Curtiss R3C-2 Racer in which U.S. Army Lieutenant James Doolittle won the Schneider Trophy Race in October 1925.

Behind the Scenes of a Museum’s Makeover

Protecting precious artifacts during the National Air and Space Museum’s multi-year revitalization.

The Museum’s murals were taken down in sections; here, a contractor identifies the canvas seams on Robert McCall’s A Cosmic View.

How Do You Move a Six-Story Space Mural?

Slowly, one panel at a time.

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