All Stories

At age 30, Afghan-American pilot Shaesta Waiz became the youngest woman to circumnavigate the globe solo in a single-engine aircraft. (She managed to snap a photo or two along the way.) Waiz shared some of her favorite images from her record-breaking journey.

The National Air and Space Museum is full of ideas that defy. Ideas that defy any obstacle, ideas that defy our expectations, ideas that literally defy gravity. Follow us as we discover the remarkable, the audacious, the outrageous, the #IdeasThatDefy.

Jeannie M. Leavitt became the Air Force’s first female fighter pilot in 1993.

On June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union closed all surface routes into the western zone of Berlin. For 18 months, American and British aircrews flew around-the-clock bringing supplies into Berlin, in a mission called the Berlin Airlift.

At Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico on December 10, 1954, the Sonic Wind No. 1 rocket sled let loose 40,000 pounds of thrust and propelled United States Air Force flight surgeon Col. John Stapp more than 3,000 feet in a few seconds. The benefits of Stapp’s research are evident every time a driver pulls on a seatbelt or a jet pilot safely ejects from a damaged aircraft.

The Museum’s She Can STEM summer camp is aimed at introducing aviation to 60 underrepresented middle school girls in the DC metro area.

The story of this emerging technology will be a cornerstone of our new Thomas W. Haas We All Fly gallery, a new exhibition that is part of the ongoing reimagining of the Museum. We are excited to feature an example of Amazon’s work in the autonomous aerial delivery field—the Amazon Prime Air Hybrid Drone.

In honor of the 75^th anniversary of the WASP founding in August 1943, we are excited to bring you some original, newly digitized images from the National Archives. 

It took a certain amount of pure grit to be a pilot in the early days of aviation – and even more for the women who had to defy convention just to get up in the air.

On October 15, 1910, Kiddo the cat became the first of his kind to attempt to cross the Atlantic Ocean by airship—and he wasn’t very happy about it.