Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Air & Space Magazine

None

In Praise of Space Monkeys (and Tortoises)

Fifty years ago today, the monkeys Able and Baker were placed inside the nose cone of a missile and launched to an altitude of 360 miles.

None

Sullymania

Captain Chesley Sullenberger was thrust into the media spotlight in January, when he landed his stricken Airbus in the Hudson River and the aircrew evacuated all passengers, largely uninjured, to safety within minutes. A remarkable piece of airmanship by the entire crew, to be sure. But since then,…

The NASA space shuttle Atlantis and the Hubble Space Telescope are seen in silhouette, side by side in this solar transit image made at 12:17p.m. EDT, Wednesday, May 13, 2009, from west of Vero Beach, Florida. The two spaceships were at an altitude of 600 km and they zipped across the sun in only 0.8 seconds. Photo Credit: (NASA/Thierry Legault)

Shuttle and Hubble

A dancing duo in solar silhouette.

None

Putting the “I” in ISS

More than a decade after construction began, the International Space Station is about to get its first full-size crew.A Soyuz spacecraft is scheduled to lift off from Kazakhstan tomorrow with three people onboard—Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, European astronaut Frank De Winne, and Canadian ast…

None

One casualty of 45,000

A bit of Memorial Day perspective from Mark Wells, a historian at the U.S. Air Force Academy, from his excellent 1995 book Courage and Air Warfare: The Allied Aircrew Experience in the Second World War: However dramatic or tragic, statistics alone cannot possibly tell the whole story of the Allied …

NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley), and The Hubble Heritage Team

Hubble Favorites

A National Air and Space Museum astronomer picks some of his favorite images from the storied telescope.

None

New and Newer

Two vehicles that like to go vertical.

None

Idolizing Hubble

We sure do love our celebrities, don’t we? And I don’t mean whatsisname, who won on American Idol last night. I’m talking about the newly upgraded Hubble Space Telescope, whose astronaut repairmen received a call from President Obama yesterday, and will deliver live testimony from space at a Congre…

Buzz Aldrin, back in the lunar module Eagle after the first moonwalk.

Unchanged

The myth of the spiritual spaceman.

“Amiable Strangers”

Three distinct personalities, one goal: reach the moon.

Armstrong in front of an X-15 after his research flight.

Neil Armstrong’s X-15 flight over Pasadena

Here’s the truth

The USS Akron takes a morning flight over Maxwell Army Air Field in Alabama, June 13, 1932.

Lighter Than Air

An illustrated history of balloons and airships.

Jack Schmitt on the lunar surface, Apollo 17, December 1972.

Voices from the Moon

Tales of lunar exploration, from the astronauts themselves.

None

Watch the launch from Wallops tonight

A Minotaur rocket is launching from Wallops Island, Virginia tonight, with the Air Force Tacsat-3 spacecraft onboard, and I won’t be there

None

What would you say to an alien?

In 1982, the year E.T. The Extraterrestrial ruled at the box office, another, less heralded movie about aliens came out—John Carpenter’s The Thing

None

Snoopy Luck

Apollo 10 grazes the moon.

None

That’s A Wrap

Night at the [Air and Space] Museum.

None

What the Augustine Committee Didn’t Know in 1990

A newly formed commission led by Norman Augustine will review NASA’s human spaceflight program with the aim of determining if we are on the “right track.”

None

The Great North Dakota Dash

Never Land: Adventures, Wonder, and One World Record in a Very Small Plane by Scott Olsen

None

Marine One

Helo taxi in the U.K.

Page 246 of 320