Curator Margaret Weitekamps shares a new artifact to join our collection: the Congressional Space Medal of Honor awarded to astronaut Neil Armstrong.

Curator Jeremy Kinney explores the contribution of Royal Air Force leader Desmond Cooke to the improvement of Supermarine Spitfires prior to the Battle of Britain.

Today we’re talking about Sully, the movie based on the real-life emergency water landing of US Airways flight 1549 which ditched in the Hudson River in January 2009. 

In 1945, the Tuskegee Airmen of the 477th Bombardment Group protested discrimination at Freeman Field through pre-planned displays of resistance against the segregated officers' clubs.

National Air and Space Museum chief curator Peter Jakab shares the story of Japanese American veteran Ben Kuroki.

On the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission, curator Margaret Weitekamp looks at the history and significance of one of our most iconic artifacts from the mission: Gene Kranz's white vest.

Women in the United States have long served their country and women aviators have been no exception.  Perhaps the best known efforts are those of the Women Air Service Pilots (WASP), formed in 1943, merging the Women’s Auxiliary Flying Squadron and Women’s Flying Training Detachment.  But before the WASP, women pilots, such as Ruth Law, Opal Kunz, Florence “Pancho” Barnes, and Mary Charles were determined to serve their country in whatever way they could.

We are pleased to announce that the Sally K. Ride Papers, consisting of over 23 cubic feet (38,640 pages!) of archival material chronicling Ride’s career from the 1970s through the 2010s, have been fully scanned and are available digitally. Air and Space fans can help make them more accessible by transcribing them in the Smithsonian Transcription Center.

Alfred "Al" Worden, command module pilot on Apollo 15, passed away on March 18, 2020. We mourn the loss and celebrate the life of Al, an aviator, engineer, and storyteller. From the halls of West Point to the far side of the Moon, the legacy of history’s first deep-space walker continues to inspire.