All Stories

With the Wicked movie coming out this November, we thought we'd look back on all things flight in the land of Oz and tell you all about how those effects were made for the screen and the stage. 

Aviation archaeology is primarily the locating and documenting of old aircraft crash sites.

A short history of early 20th-century drones.

In its operation for over 25 years, NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory has changed our understanding of the universe. 

These days, it takes seven hours to fly from New York to London, compared to under three hours flying at twice the speed of sound on the Concorde. When I started my internship at the National Air and Space Museum, I was determined to learn why.  

There are a lot of air and space celebrities; pilots, astronauts, engineers, etc, etc. But there's another category of celebrities that are famous for other things but also have surprising ties to air or space.

Ed Stone’s long and distinguished career in space science connects to many of the planetary exploration objects displayed in the galleries at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. That so many of the Museum’s objects have connections to his professional achievements illustrates Stone’s significant legacy in space science and exploration.

It is perhaps one of the best-known images of the 20th century. Floating free against the velvety blackness of space was Bruce McCandless II. What is perhaps less well-known was the fact that, underneath the gold visor of his helmet, McCandless was wearing glasses.  

Pulling back the curtain on artifacts in storage. For this issue, we feature the Boeing X-45A UAV.

Many books have been written and movies made about the possibility of humans colonizing Mars. Some include descriptions of growing food in habitats or even changing the Martian climate via “terraforming” to enable large scale agriculture. But how realistic is it to think that Earth plants could grow unprotected on Mars today?