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March 2014

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Features

The newest class is also the smallest; with missions uncertain, the eight-member “8 Balls” will go to space in the Orion capsule…eventually.

Astronauts Waiting for a Ride

Now that the space shuttle's gone, what do astronauts do?

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The Outrageous Adolescence of the F-16

Small, fast, and in your face

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Prize Photos

Presenting the First Air & Space Photo Contest Winners

An Israeli armored brigade approaches the Golan Heights to relieve forces under Syrian attack on day two of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. U.S. fears that the Soviet Union would send troops to assist Egypt and Syria sparked a DEFCON level increase.

DEFCON 3

Checklist for war

Cosmologists study the large-scale structure and evolution of the universe -- here imagined as it evolved (reading left to right) from 900 million years after the Big Bang to today.

News from the Dawn of Time

Will a new picture of the universe’s first light overturn a theory that has reigned for 30 years?

This Jenny belongs to Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in New York.

Letters From a JN-4 Pilot

“Give me a Lewis gun in the cockpit of a fast fighter plane, and I know that I’d be satisfied with life.”

In Iceland, at one end of the 10,000-mile-long Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a visitor could see new crust being born as magma oozes up from the interior.

Destination Earth

If aliens were sending a probe to study this planet, where would you tell it to land?

When Alan Shepard strode out to the Mercury-Redstone rocket in May 1961 (above, right), NASA was scarcely integrated. By 1965, at the time of the Selma-to-Montgomery, Alabama civil rights march (above, left), the Huntsville rocket center employed several

And We Could Not Fail

How NASA became part of the nation's the civil rights revolution

Departments

Viewport

Viewport

Viewport

Above & Beyond

Above and Beyond

I Got Those Old Beat-Up Orion Blues

Oldies and Oddities

Oldies & Oddities

Rotary-Wing Tugboat

In the Museum

In the Museum

What You Can See in the Photo of the First Flight