Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Air & Space Magazine

Sullenberger inside an MD-80 in 2001, with daughters Kate (left) and Kelly.

Sully’s Tale

Chesley Sullenberger talks about That Day, his advice for young pilots, and hitting the ditch button (or not)

Tinker Air Force Base photo by Margo Wright 10Flight Test Squadron members, Maj. Tim Hines, left, and Maj. Cary Montgomery bring a B-52 back to base after a functional test flight. The crew will then fly the aircraft back to its home station.

Half a Hundred Years

The B-52 just keeps on keepin’ on.

Free image for editorial usage only: Photo by Joerg Mitter NO SALES. NO ARCHIVES. FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NOT FOR SALE FOR MARKETING OR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS. For more pictures, videos and TV material go to www.redbullairracenewsroom.com info: +43 676 9364 137

The Red Bulls

Ready to hang it out there again in ‘09.

President Obama: Andrews Air Force Base departure en route Newport News, Virginia.

Business Traveler

He’s free to move about the cabin.

None

Touch of Grey

Boeing’s Jumbo Jet turns 40 years old.

None

The Strange Story of Lunar Magnetism

We’ve known since the beginning of the space age that the Moon has no global magnetic field.

None

Nice Backdrop

For a split second a moon poses with a space station.

None

The Art of War

The paintings of Tom Lea, Life magazine’s artist-correspondent during World War II.

None

Planet Like Ours, Not

Smallest exoplanet found is too hot to touch.

U.S. Navy Aviation Structural Mechanic 3rd Class Thomas Corbiere signals final safety checks are complete as an F/A-18E Super Hornet aircraft from Strike Fighter Squadron 147 launches from the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) Jan. 25, 2009, while under way in the Pacific Ocean on a six-month deployment. (DoD photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Elliott Fabrizio, U.S. Navy/Released)

Azure Haze

Turning up the burners.

Mike Mangold stands on his tail in an Edge 540 at Rotterdam’s Erasmus Bridge (no, sorry, he didn’t go under it).

Sightings: AN AD CAMPAIGN WITH ENERGY

Sightings: AN AD CAMPAIGN WITH ENERGY

NASA’s Ethiraj Venkatapathy (left) and Betsy Pugel, and the Museum’s Hanna Szczepanowska, look over Apollo heat shields.

In the Museum: Hot Commodity

In the Museum: Hot Commodity

Briefcase in hand, a passenger weighs in at London’s Croydon Aerodrome before a flight to Scotland in 1934. The checks were necessary to ensure the airplane wasn’t too heavy for takeoff.

Then & Now: A Weighty Matter

Then & Now: A Weighty Matter

None

Koronas-Foton Flies

Russia, back in the saddle in the satellite business.

None

PanoramObama

Going from macro to micro is becoming a snap.

None

3-D

What better way to admire an airplane.

None

What Apollo was…and wasn’t

Miles O’Brien, late of CNN, recently wrote a column reflecting on the accomplishment of the Apollo program and the space program since then.

None

Countdown Begins

Ares I-X gets its game face on.

George Mosolov toured the National Air and Space Museum in 2007.

A Top Soviet-Era Test Pilot

Georgy Mosolov talks about his favorite MiGs and his friend Yuri Gagarin

None

Inauguration Day

Best seat in the House, and the Senate.

Page 255 of 320