Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Air & Space Magazine

Tony Zhao and Milton Marwa connect the battery cable to an experimental engine and prop at the Eagle Flight Research Center in Florida.

How is an Aircraft Propulsion System Like a Stack of Pancakes?

Affix Wipline 13000 floats to a Viking DHC-6 Twin Otter to make it a floatplane.

5 Tips for Internships

A virtual reality experience that showcases how the upper class flies.

Fly Etihad, With Nicole Kidman

Jamie Mitchell at the office, a B-24 cockpit: She often gets publicity for the Collings Foundation tour by inviting local TV reporters to broadcast the weather from one of the aircraft.

Warbird Wrangler, Wings of Freedom Tour

None

Headed to the Drop Zone

A C-17 Globemaster full of soldiers heads to a drop zone over North Carolina.

For his cameo role as an alien in the new film, Star Trek Beyond, Jeff Bezos had to sit two hours in a makeup chair, but he says it was worth it.

Jeff Bezos’ Simple Two-Step Plan

Revolutionizing online shopping wasn’t challenging enough, apparently.

None

Sikorsky Testing

A technician sets up camera equipment to watch the rotor-blades on a Sikorsky YR-4B/HNS-1 helicopter in a wind tunnel at NASA’s Langley Research Center.

Tiangong-2 heads to the launch pad on top of a Long March rocket.

China Prepares for First Astronaut Flight in Three Years

Tiangong-2 marks another step toward a long-term space station.

A billion points of light: Gaia’s all-sky map shows the disk of the Milky Way at center, with dark patches of obscuring dust. At lower right are two nearby galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Stripes in the image are data gaps—which eventually will be filled in. Click here to see a larger, annotated version.

Gaia’s Billion-Star Atlas Will Revolutionize Astronomy

The ultimate roadmap of our galaxy is now online.

None

Expedition Landing

The Soyuz capsule holding the Expedition 47 members, including astronaut Tim Kopra, lands in Kazakhstan in June.

Spaceship Unity, carried by Virgin Galactic's mother ship and piloted by Mark Stucky and Dave Mackay, makes its first flight over the Mojave desert on September 8, 2016.

Virgin Galactic Gets Back to Flying

Unity picks up where the space tourism company left off in 2014.

Methane plumes as discovered by Michael Mumma in the northern summer of Mars in 2003. Higher methane concentrations are shown in yellow and red.

Martian Methane May Come From Comets

A new explanation for one of planetary science’s big mysteries.

Three ways to lower the costs of human spaceflight: reusable launch vehicles (left), heavy lift rockets (middle), mining the Moon for propellant (right). All three have advantages and disadvantages.

Lowering the Cost of Human Spaceflight

Three ways to make things cheaper.

None

Night Refueling

The view from a KC-135 Stratotanker as an F-22 Raptor gets refueled during night strike exercises.

A Boost for Astrobiology in Germany

A new society dedicated to studying life on other worlds.

None

After the Drop

A B-50 drops the Bell X-2 with pilot Lt. Col. Frank “Pete” Everest on its first unpowered flight in 1954. In the next couple years, he would reach up to Mach 2.87 in the X-2.

Leonard Nimoy and his son, Adam—who is now a filmmaker—seen during the original run of "Star Trek" in the mid-1960s.

Filmmaker Adam Nimoy’s Homage to His Famous Dad

The new documentary, For the Love of Spock, premieres Friday.

None

High Alpha Pass

Thunderbird pilot Captain Nicholas Eberling performs the High Alpha Pass maneuver at an air show in Utah.

A Falcon 9 explodes on the launch pad, 9:07 a.m. on September 1, 2016.

Bad Day at Pad 40

SpaceX loses a rocket, and some of its momentum.

A KC-135 Stratotanker from Royal Air Force Mildenhall, England, refuels a pair of F-16 Fighting Falcons in flight.

The Stratotanker Turns 60

The KC-135 aerial refueling aircraft made its first flight on August 31, 1956.

Page 66 of 320