All Stories

Message from the director. The National Mall Museum will open the Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater, and five more galleries July 28, 2025.

On display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center is perhaps the only remaining artifact from the Society for Space Travel, an influential interwar rocketry club. Learn about the journey the object took before it joined the National Collection.

Get a behind the scenes listen of Futures in Space, one of the new galleries, with two of its curators. 

Many are familiar with Rosie the Riveter. However, women also played an important role in World War I, especially in regard to aviation.

With the advent of the Space Age, scientists began searching for extraterrestrial life using radio waves, believing advanced civilizations might send signals across space. Despite Cold War tensions, researchers from different countries worked together to explore this possibility. Their efforts led to international meetings, shaping modern SETI research in the search for cosmic communication.

Chauncey Spencer and Dale White were charged with flying to DC to advocate for opportunities for Black pilots.

Aviator Pancho Barnes was larger than life. Born at the turn of the century, she spent the next 75 years defying every societal norm she found stuffy, boring, or just plain stupid. 

In 1923, the U.S. Army Air Service announced it was going to attempt a flight around the globe.  

Charles Alfred Anderson most accomplished aviators in the country and a ground-breaking advocate for Black pilots.

U.S. Army Air Service pilots Lt. John A. Macready and Lt. Oakley G. Kelly made the first nonstop transcontinental flight.