Articles tagged as Space Travel | Smithsonian Magazine

A newly-released poster in NASA's Visions of the Future series heralds a future "grand tour" using gravity assists.

Cool Finds

NASA Went Retro With Their New Space Travel Posters

Travel to the world of tomorrow—today!

February 10, 2016

Cool Finds

Take 360-Degree Tours of Mars and the Moon

Earth’s neighbors have never seemed so tantalizingly close

February 10, 2016

A view of Earth from a replica of the Cupola Observation Module.

Cool Finds

Check Out This Scale Replica of The International Space Station

Pretend you’re in orbit without ever leaving the ground

February 4, 2016

Christa McAuliffe received a preview of microgravity during a special flight aboard NASA's KC-135 "zero gravity" aircraft. She was to be the first in a series of civilians in space

The Challenger Disaster Put an End to NASA’s Plan to Send Civilians Into Space

On the 30th anniversary of the space shuttle tragedy, a look back at an ambitious plan to put the rest of us into orbit

January 27, 2016

The Znamya 2 mirror-solar sail, deployed.

Cool Finds

How a Russian Space Mirror Briefly Lit Up the Night

In 1993, the 65-foot-diameter satellite, called Znamya, briefly lit the Earth like a giant orbiting night light

January 21, 2016

The transporter in this artwork is called the Clarke Clipper, after the British science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote about space elevators in his novel The Fountains of Paradise.

People Are Still Trying to Build a Space Elevator

Though key players have distanced themselves from the concept, a new film examines the continuing draw behind the sci-fi staple

January 21, 2016

Pictures? No problem. But don’t expect much information. A crew tends to the X-37B after it landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in October 2014, after 674 days in orbit.

What’s the Secretive X-37 Spaceplane Doing Up There?

The Air Force isn’t saying, so we asked other spaceplane experts

January 20, 2016

This flower isn't just a pretty face—its the first one ever grown in space.

Cool Finds

Check Out the First Flower Grown in Space

It was a close call for this brilliant orange zinnia

January 18, 2016

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches on Sunday, January 17. Though the launch went as planned, the craft's landing did not.

Jason-3 made it to orbit—but the company’s Falcon 9 rocket didn’t make it back to Earth in one piece

January 18, 2016

Cool Finds

What’s Inside this Artistic Capsule Headed to the Moon?

See how these artists captured a portrait of humanity in just six ounces

January 8, 2016

The Postal Service honors NASA’s New Horizons Mission and Star Trek’s premiere

January 4, 2016

A Soyuz TMA-17M spacecraft lifts off from a launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on July 23, 2015.

Russia’s federal space agency will soon be no more

December 28, 2015

Screenshot from “The story of space debris” showing the Earth's cluttered space in 2015.

Cool Finds

Jettison Through Nearly 60 Years of Space Junk Accumulation

People have been leaving a mess out in Earth’s orbit

December 28, 2015

The back shell of NASA’s InSight spacecraft being lowered onto the lander, last July, in preparation for the mission.

A leak in a key instrument on board the InSight lander means the team will have to wait for the next launch window in 2018

December 23, 2015

A long exposure captures the Falcon 9's launch and return.

Trending Today

SpaceX’s Rocket Stuck the Landing

During the first Falcon 9 launch in six months, the first stage booster rocket make a neat u-turn in air and a clean landing on the ground

December 22, 2015

This Metal Is 99.9 Percent Air

A new metal “microlattice” is strong yet incredibly light, lending itself to a wide variety of aerospace, automotive and medical uses

December 18, 2015

Darth Vader could have saved a few dollars by building it around an asteroid

December 17, 2015

NASA astronauts Scott Kelly (left) and Terry Virts (right) work on a day’s task on board the International Space Station

New Research

How Much Space Do Astronauts Need?

The answer could help design spacecraft for one day taking people on the months-long trip to Mars

December 15, 2015

Surprising bright spots lurking in Ceres’ Occator crater, as spotted by the Dawn spacecraft

New Research

We Finally May Know the Cause of Ceres’ Bright Spots

It’s not aliens

December 10, 2015

The informally named al-Idrisi mountains meet the smooth surface of Sputnik Planum in this image.

New Research

New Images Capture Pluto’s Mountains, Badlands and Craters in Breathtaking Detail

These images are “the best close-ups of Pluto that humans may see for decades,” according to NASA

December 8, 2015