Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Science / Space

NASA Mission Control during the Apollo 11 moonwalk, with the live broadcast from the lunar surface on the screen.

Apollo at 50: We Choose to Go to the Moon

A Wind Storm in Australia Nearly Interrupted the Moon Landing Broadcast

As Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, radio telescope operators in New South Wales scrambled to receive the live video

The author likes to think the lunar rover's design was informed in part by his father's experience retooling the family station wagon.

From the Family Station Wagon to the Apollo Lunar Rover, My Dad’s Engineering Talent Had No Limits

Stricken with polio as an adult, he retired from the military and joined NASA’s ingenious design team

Photos Capture the Great South American Eclipse

On July 2, residents of Chile and Argentina witnessed the first total solar eclipse since August 2017

Ann Montgomery, lead crew systems engineer during the Apollo program, on the swing arm of the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center with other NASA employees, circa 1970.

Apollo at 50: We Choose to Go to the Moon

At 21, Ann Montgomery Became a Lead Engineer at NASA, Managing the Cameras and Other Crucial Gear Used on the Moon

Montgomery worked closely with the Apollo astronauts to train them to use handheld tools and equipment on the moon

None

Future of Space Exploration

Future of Space Exploration

To boldly go where no humans have gone before

Though photons do not have mass, they do transfer momentum when they reflect off a reflective space sail, giving it a slight boost.

Future of Space Exploration

LightSail 2 Launches to Space to Soar on the Power of Sunshine

The Planetary Society’s second solar sail will attempt to use sunlight to fly through space

Anaxagoras, who lived in the fifth century B.C., was one of the first people in recorded history to recognize that the moon was a rocky, mountainous body.

An Ancient Greek Philosopher Was Exiled for Claiming the Moon Was a Rock, Not a God

2,500 years ago, Anaxagoras correctly determined that the rocky moon reflects light from the sun, allowing him to explain lunar phases and eclipses

A Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket, with a payload of 60 satellites for SpaceX's Starlink broadband network, lifts off from Space Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Thursday, May 23, 2019.

Future of Space Exploration

SpaceX Launched 60 Internet-Beaming Satellites Into Orbit

Last night’s successful launch was the first big step in SpaceX’s plan to provide global internet coverage from space

As the 2017 North American total solar eclipse comes to an end, the famous "diamond ring" becomes visible. The sun's corona is also visible, with the star Regulus to the left.

A Total Solar Eclipse 100 Years Ago Proved Einstein’s General Relativity

Two teams of astronomers voyaged to Africa and Brazil to observe the most famous eclipse in science

None

Apollo at 50: We Choose to Go to the Moon

We Chose to Go to the Moon

A collection of stories to celebrate the semicentennial of the Apollo 11 mission

This lunar extravehicular visor assembly, photographed by Cade Martin at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar- Hazy Center, was worn by Neil Armstrong on the Moon in July 1969. Armstrong’s helmet visors were designed to protect against hazards, from micrometeoroids to infrared light.

Apollo at 50: We Choose to Go to the Moon

What You Didn’t Know About the Apollo 11 Mission

From JFK’s real motives to the Soviets’ secret plot to land on the Moon at the same time, a new behind-the-scenes view of an unlikely triumph 50 years ago

The Apollo 10 Command Module, "Charlie Brown," as seen from the detached Lunar Module, "Snoopy."

A Smithsonian Curator Reflects on Apollo 10, the Mission That Made Landing on the Moon Possible

Fifty years ago, the astronauts who crewed the “dress rehearsal” for Apollo 11 paved the way for history to be made just a couple months later

To all the looney lunar landing deniers and conspiracy theorists out there, NASA has just four words to say: "Apollo: Yes, We Did."

Apollo at 50: We Choose to Go to the Moon

Yes, the United States Certainly DID Land Humans on the Moon

Moon-landing deniers, says space scholar and former NASA chief historian Roger Launius, are full of stuff and nonsense

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine talks about getting American astronauts to the moon in the next five years while participating in a Future Con panel discussion at Awesome Con.

Future Con

This Year’s Future Con Showcased Cutting-Edge Science and Real-Life Superheroes

A part of Washington, D.C.’s Awesome Con, the dynamic presentation series blends entertainment and education

This artist's-concept illustration depicts the spacecraft of NASA's Psyche mission near the mission's target, the metal asteroid Psyche.

Future of Space Exploration

NASA Prepares to Build Spacecraft Bound for a Metal Asteroid

The Psyche spacecraft, headed to an asteroid with the same name, will explore a metal world thought to be the leftover core of a destroyed planet

A photographic plate of the 1919 total solar eclipse, taken by Andrew Claude de la Cherois Crommelin and Charles Rundle Davidson during an expedition to Sobral, Brazil. The 1919 eclipse was used by Arthur Eddington, who observed it from the island of Principe off the west coast of Africa, to provide the first experimental evidence of Einstein's theory of relativity.

What the Obsolete Art of Mapping the Skies on Glass Plates Can Still Teach Us

The first pictures of the sky were taken on glass photographic plates, and these treasured artifacts can still help scientists make discoveries today

Shortly after the first human space flight, the Soviet Union began planning to send a woman to space.

The First Group of Female Cosmonauts Were Trained to Conquer the Final Frontier

Two decades before the first American woman flew to space, a group of female cosmonauts trained in Star City of the Soviet Union 

Identical twin astronauts, Scott and Mark Kelly, are subjects of NASA’s Twins Study. Scott (right) spent a year in space while Mark (left) stayed on Earth as a control subject.

NASA’s Study of Astronaut Twins Creates a Portrait of What a Year in Space Does to the Human Body

Wide-ranging research compares astronaut Scott Kelly to his earthbound twin brother, Mark

The image reveals the black hole at the center of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole resides 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the sun.

Astronomers Capture First-Ever Image of a Supermassive Black Hole

The Event Horizon Telescope reveals the silhouette of a black hole at the center of a galaxy 55 million light-years away

Jennifer Levasseur from the National Air and Space Museum notes that the museum’s supply of popular astronaut foods is less comprehensive than its collection of rejects. “We only get what they didn’t eat (above: Apollo 17's spiced fruit cereal is now in the collections)."

Rita Rapp Fed America’s Space Travelers

NASA’s food packages now in the collections of the Air and Space Museum tell the story of how a physiologist brought better eating to outer space

Page 10 of 38