The Museum's Archives holds large digitized collections highlighting the contributions of high-profile women, ranging from aviators Louise McPhetridge Thaden and the Ninety-Nines to astronauts Sally K. Ride and Kathryn D. Sullivan.  There are also smaller collections, some containing just one to two documents, representing women whose experiences are just as important to telling the full story of women in aviation and space flight.

Thanks to GPS, ecologists today can track thousands of animals all the time with tracking devices that can be smaller than a quarter. But in 1970 there was just a weather satellite, a 23 pound collar, and an elk named Monique. On this episode of AirSpace, we talk to some of the scientists who use space to track animals here on Earth.

James Banning is perhaps best known for this record-setting transcontinental flight, but his story and accomplishments started years earlier.

The Juno spacecraft currently orbiting Jupiter almost didn’t have a camera, and boy would that have been a shame. On this episode of AirSpace, we unpack how JunoCam has contributed to science and completely changed the way we view this beautiful gas giant.

Marlon D. Green fought and won the right to fly as a pilot by a major U.S. airline.

During World War II, the U.S. Navy did not have a program that allowed African Americans to train and fly as naval aviators. Jesse Leroy Brown, however, fought through many hurdles to become the first African American to complete Navy flight training. Discover his story.

Maj. Gen. Charles Bolden was NASA's first African American Administrator. He also served in the military and logged over 680 hours in space.

Cornelius Coffey was an advocate for the education of Black Americans in aeronautics.  

Frank01 and Frank02—The call signs used on the mission to shoot down a Chinese observation balloon, were a direct reference to the accomplished “balloon busting” career of Frank Luke Jr. Learn about the historical thread connecting a balloon over the United States to the skies above World War I Europe.

In the fifties and sixties to get hired as a stewardess put you in a club that was akin to being a movie star. Around this time, a highly qualified woman, top of her training class, beautiful and poised, didn't understand why she wasn't being hired, until an instructor told her it was because she was Black.