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Air & Space Magazine

The Bugatti Racer Finally Takes Flight

Almost 80 years after it was designed, the sleek 100p gets airborne.

Ringside Seat

This image from NASA’s Cassini orbiter shows the C and D rings of Saturn. The C ring is the denser, outer ring on the bottom half of the photo.

Lunar hunters are trying to find Luna 9.

The Search for Luna 9

Fifty years later, researchers try to locate the first spacecraft to land on another world.

Fernando Soto in 1970 atop his Honduran Corsair, with symbols marking his victories. The aircraft is now in the Honduras air museum, which keeps it in running (but not flying) condition.

The Last Piston-Engine Dogfights

Corsairs against Mustangs in the skies over Central America in 1969.

A Singapore Air 747 bounds skyward from LAX, headed to one of 61 destinations on six continents.

Love Letter to the 747

In his new book, an airline pilot contemplates the wonder of flight and the world’s first jumbo jet.

Powered by two electric engines, the Airbus E-Fan crosses the English Channel in July.

Showtime for E-Planes

A battery-powered race to cross the English Channel.

Experiments with surgical containment measures on aircraft showed an OR in micro-G to be a poor option.

Space Station ER

What happens if an astronaut in space needs surgery?

The Bell UH-1 was the workhorse of the Vietnam War.

Where Huey Pilots Trained and Heroes Were Made

Basic training for a dangerous job.

Cosmonaut Maksim Suraev, palling around with two empty spacesuits, was the first Russian to blog from space, giving citizens a look into orbital goings-on.

A Rare Look at the Russian Side of the Space Station

How the other half lives.

A team excavates the site near Allmuthen, Belgium where a U.S. Army Air Forces B-26 crashed 68 years ago.

Bring the Fallen Airmen Home

A volunteer group helps fund searches for the missing by selling rides in the types of aircraft they once flew.

For the first New York-to-Chicago mail flight, in 1918, Max Miller accepts a mailbag from New York City Postmaster Thomas Patten.

Where Did Max Miller Die?

One man’s search for the place where the U.S. Air Mail Service lost a star

The Cult of the Sonic Cruiser

The airliner that never took off.

DSI’s concept for a fuel processor.

The Extraterrestrial Commodities Market

A visionary scientist says that asteroids and comets can be the foundation of a lucrative space-based economy.

This 18th-century box is decorated with an image of J.A.C. Charles and M.N. Roberts rising above the Paris skyline in the first gas balloon to carry humans aloft, on December 1, 1783.

Mementos of the Balloon Age

Evelyn Kendall’s collection of early flight artifacts lands at the Museum.

Robert T. Bigelow has developed the inflatable Bigelow Expanded Activity Module, an aluminum habitation, to test in space. Pictured is a one-third scale model.

The Future of Construction in Space

Is the International Space Station the last aluminum spacecraft?

Areas likely to flood along Ecuador's Napo River appear in the airborne radar images.

Disaster Prevention in a Gulfstream

Earthquakes, volcanoes, mudslides: Airborne radar watches all the ways the earth moves.

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15 Years of Living in Space

The highs and lows of life in an orbiting tin can

Portraits of Belka and Strelka—adorably dressed in their red and green spacesuits—appeared on postcards (shown here), chocolates, matchboxes, stamps, and toys soon after their orbital flight in 1960.

Belka and Strelka: Space Celebrities

55 years ago today, two “cosmonauts” went into orbit and safely returned.

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Chesapeake Flyover

The Breitling Jet Team, on their first U.S. tour in June 2015, fly over a replica of the Marquis de Lafayette’s 18th -century ship, the Hermoine, in Chesapeake Bay, Virginia.

Dive to the USS Macon Wreck

Explorers on a six-month ocean mapping voyage are diving to the sunken airship today.

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