All Stories

The nation is in the process of commemorating the 150^th anniversary of the Civil War and those of us at the Smithsonian are very much involved, searching our collections for items that will help our visitors better understand the conflict that divided 19^th century America. As might be expected, the National Museum of American History, the National Portrait Gallery, and the National Museum of American Art preserve and display a wealth of objects, portraits, and images that help to bring the Civil War era to life. Who would have guessed, however, that the National Air and Space Museum would hold a single object used by more high ranking Union Army officers than any other surviving artifact in the entire Smithsonian collection!

On March 18, 2011, at 8:45 pm EDT, MESSENGER became the first spacecraft ever to enter Mercury's orbit. In this blog, Tom Watters reflects on the importance of this achievement.

10 Cool Things You May Not Know About The Museum's Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird

I first thought of putting together a book on planetary tectonics when I was working on a general subject matter book on the planets in the mid 1990’s.  That book had a “comparing the planets” section where I showed examples of tectonic landforms on Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.  Tectonic landforms are created when forces act on solid crustal material and they are found on objects of all sizes in the solar system. 

May 6th, 1944 - one month to the day before D-Day - German troops scatter for safety as Lt. Albert Lanker of the 31st Photo Reconnaissance Squadron flies fast and very low over the beach in "Outlaw", his F-5 Lightning (a variant of the Lockheed P-38 fighter). Lanker's job was to photograph the beach obstructions on the Normandy coast for the planners of the massive invasion; it was only his third mission. Jobs of this sort were called "dicing" missions, because the pilot, flying low (and unarmed) was dicing with death every time he flew.