Exhibitions

In the tense years of the Cold War, applications satellites evolved down two separate paths: one devoted to national security needs, the other to civilian interests.

The airplane emerged from World War I recognized widely for its potential as a military weapon. In the United States, Army pilots and Navy and Marine aviators worked to realize their different visions of the airplane’s ultimate role in American defense.

Nation of Speed recounts our desire to become the fastest on land, sea, air, and space in the pursuit of commerce, power, and prestige.

One World Connected tells the story of how taking to the skies and stars fostered two momentous changes in everyday life: the ease in making connections across vast distances and a new perspective of Earth as humanity’s home.

The Wright brothers inaugurated the aerial age with their historic first flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903. The influence of their invention is beyond measure. The transport by air of goods and people, quickly and over great distances, and the military applications of flight technology have had vast economic, geopolitical, and cultural impact around the globe. The Wrights helped fashion a radically new world.
 

Learn how rocketry got a boost in the 20th century, altering warfare and taking humans into space.

Learn about the broad range of science performed by vehicles that travel into the Earth's atmosphere and beyond. The relatively young field of space science ranges from Earth observation to planetary exploration to astronomy and astrophysics.

See the Bell X-1, the first aircraft to break the sound barrier, in the same Hall as Friendship 7, NASA astronaut John Glenn’s spacecraft in which he became the first American to orbit the Earth. The Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall showcases some of the museum’s most iconic objects. 

Destination Moon shows how an extraordinary combination of motivations, resources, and technologies made it at long last possible for humans to walk on the Moon.

The Kenneth C. Griffin Exploring the Planets Gallery probes the science and history of our exploration of planets and moons, telling the stories of the diversity of worlds circling our Sun and how exploring those worlds helps enhance our own understanding of Earth.