All Stories

Amid all these aircraft maintenance manuals, engine overhaul manuals, and parts catalogs in the Museum, there exists a U.S. Army Air Forces (AAF) manual that details the use of homing pigeons in combat zones during World War II.

On March 16, 1966, the Gemini VIII astronauts made the world’s first space docking, quickly followed by the first life-threatening, in-flight emergency in the short history of the U.S. human spaceflight program.

It seems like every time there’s big news from outer space, it’s that we found water some place—as traces of ice or wisps of vapor, embedded in rocks or bound up in dry-as-dirt-regolith. Today, Matt, Nick, and Emily explore how we search for wet spots in the solar system, what they can tell us about our home planet, and why they’re the key to making our way in the universe.

In 1896, Ethiopians had turned back an Italian invasion at Adwa (Adowa), serving as an example of a Black-led country’s defiance of Europe. Taking inspiration from Ethiopia’s long history as an independent Black nation, two Black aviators—Hubert Julian and John C. Robinson—were drawn to Ethiopia by the events of 1935.

In 1977, Fred Eversley was invited to work as the first artist in residence in the newly-opened National Air and Space Museum. His art is often grouped with the “Light and Space” artworks made in California during the 1960s–1970s, a movement associated with the minimalist and abstract qualities of art informed by the aerospace technologies and industries on the west coast.

I’m an executive producer at Smithsonian Channel and I had the pleasure of making the documentary Making Tracks on Mars. We made our film feel like an adventure because most people think of Mars as a frontier, but at its core, the story taps into our primal drive to explore.

It took decades of research, lobbying, and litigation to prove the dangers of secondhand smoke, and a lot of that work happened at cruising altitude. In this episode, we’ll hear how flight attendants were instrumental in the fight to get smoking OUT of the skies, and how the lawsuit they brought against the tobacco companies had huge ripple effects in the smoke-free public places we enjoy today.

It’s been nearly 60 years since the first spacecraft were sent to Mars, and it’s inspiring to reflect on the progress that has been made since then. If all goes according to plan, the landing of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover will mark the start of NASA’s ninth surface mission on the Red Planet.

To get the answer, we have to know what to look for and where to go on the planet for evidence of past life. With the Perseverance rover set to land on Mars on February 18, we are finally in a position to know.

In 1897 author H.G. Wells imagined a different way to see Mars in his short shorty, “The Crystal Egg." Writing around the same time as his famous novel, “War of the Worlds,” he introduces us to two humans who discover a mysterious egg-shaped crystal that allows them to view the surface of Mars – and the strange creatures that inhabit it.