The latest news in aviation and space.

Discover the process behind the conservation treatment of a set of batteries that Samuel Langley used in laboratory experiments, providing power to Langley’s later aviation and scientific experiments.

On January 30, 1942, the Army Air Corps awarded Northrop a contract to build two XP-61 prototypes. Rediscover the Northrop P-61 Black Widow aircraft in part two of the blog series.

When Barbie first became an astronaut in 1965, she was more than a decade ahead of NASA sending a woman to space. Since then, there have been several versions of astronaut Barbie.

As a cub in the 1930s, Gilmore made aviation history when he traveled around the United States with the flamboyant and colorful aviator Roscoe Turner as a mascot for the Gilmore Oil Company. This is the second in a three-part blog series about the conservation treatment of Gilmore the Flying Lion. Explore how the Museum balanced caring for the original taxidermy with the goal to present Gilmore as lifelike as possible.

During launch, the micrometeoroid shield surrounding the Skylab Workshop ripped loose. Designed to protect the workshop from tiny space particles and the sun's scorching heat, its loss caused sunlight to raise internal temperatures to over 130° F, making the station uninhabitable and threatening foods, medicines, films, and experiments that were onboard. Astronaut Rusty Schweickart was responsible for testing a parasol on Earth and developing procedures for deploying it in space in an effort to save America’s first space station.

From Dante to Matt Damon, Percival Lowell to Perseverance, humans have long wondered about, studied, and eventually explored our closest planetary neighbor, Mars.

Sitting atop a pedestal in front of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum is the abstract sculpture Continuum, 1976, by Charles O. Perry, known for his public art installations located at buildings, universities, and parks. Continuum is typically described as a Möbius strip, a star shooting through a black hole, a design inspired by geometry, or the continuous flow of the universe.

The recent announcement of the crew for NASA’s upcoming Artemis II mission in Houston, Texas, featured a major role for Canada. Introduced with NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch was Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The four astronauts are scheduled to test the Orion spacecraft in high Earth orbit, then make a loop around the Moon—becoming the first human beings to venture into deep space since the Apollo 17 astronauts in December 1972. It is an honor to be selected for this crew, so why would a United States agency give up one of the seats to a Canadian?

In 1969, nearly 600 million people tuned in to watch the Apollo 11 Moon landing. Four of these rapt viewers were a family of Indian immigrants in Delaware. Four months later that family was driving through Ohio and decided to stop and knock on Neil Armstrong’s parent's door.