All Stories

The majority of what has been accomplished in space has been carried out by uncrewed robotic craft. 

Five Lunar Orbiter missions photographed both the near and far sides of the Moon in 1966 and 1967 to prepare for the Apollo landings.

The new climate change exhibition focuses on how aerospace innovations are helping us to both understand what is happening and how we can potentially mitigate the causes and effects.

As we wait for season TEN (!!!) we're looking back on this season six favorite. Every day, satellites orbit Earth taking pictures. These images are used for everything from intelligence to weather prediction and even today’s topic – archaeology. 

Have you ever wondered how astronauts on the ISS or elsewhere in space vote? We'll tell you exactly how to cast a ballot from 250 miles up in orbit on AirSpace.

An elephant tracking collar from the Smithsonian Institution’s Conservation Ecology Center at the National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute is now in the collection of the National Air and Space Museum. Conservation explains why the collar is in the collection, the decision-making behind leaving the dirt on the surface, and how the museum decided to mount the collar for display.

Hurricanes are a fact of life in the Caribbean but in 2017, the season was so bad that it changed everything for the people of Puerto Rico. We spoke to two Coast Guard members, as well as one of our own colleagues, about what the hurricane was like, and what happened after.

Instruments in the Smithsonian collection trace the story of how humans have explored the universe for thousands of years. Join us in taking a look at just a few examples! 

In modern society, we often take the daily weather report for granted. We turn on the news, open the weather app on our smart phone, or look up our region’s weather on the internet. Have you ever thought about how meteorologists predict the forecast? For a big part of the answer, we need to look to the sky. 

The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) launched the first GAMBIT-1 high-resolution photoreconnaissance satellite on July 12, 1963. It enabled the United States intelligence community photo analysts to see more detailed images.