Tony Reichhardt

Tony Reichhardt is a senior editor at Air & Space.

Not just a ship, but a shipyard. The SpaceX plan to launch hundreds of vehicles a year from Starbase (seen here in January 2021) will require a pace of operations never even attempted in the rocket business.

Marsliner

Elon Musk’s giant Starship will leave the world behind.

Astronaut Gus Grissom on the recovery aircraft carrier, still wondering what happened following his Mercury-Redstone 4 flight and ordeal in the water.

New Evidence Shows That Gus Grissom Did Not Accidentally Sink His Own Spacecraft 60 Years Ago

Careful analysis of the recovery film showed it was static electricity that doomed the <i>Liberty Bell 7.</i>

The crew of Inspiration4: From left, Jared Isaacman, Hayley Arceneaux, Sian Proctor, and Chris Sembroski.

Branson and Bezos May Reach Space First, But Billionaire Jared Isaacman (Who?) Has Booked a Better Trip

The all-rookie Inspiration4 crew will spend days in orbit, instead of a few minutes above the atmosphere.

The Chelyabinsk meteor comes screaming in at Mach 60 over Russia in 2013. This 20-meter-or-so object broke up in the atmosphere, but the shock wave caused 1,600 injuries and damaged more than 7,000 buildings. Think what an impactor seven times bigger could do.

NASA’s Most Important Mission, Long Delayed, Is Finally on Track

And no, it’s not a moon landing.

A simulated airplane lands on the real Stanford campus, thanks to a bit of AR magic.

Now There’s a Way to Watch Your Friend’s (Simulated) Airplane Flying in the Real World (Sort of)

It sounds complicated, but it’s actually pretty clever.

Need to get away from the office? Try the Portal to Mars. The portal stays open, so you can still get back for your meeting.

This New AR App is the Coolest Way to Learn About Mars

Drive a rover, walk the Martian surface, and play robot geologist, all in augmented reality.

Members of the Mars InSight team celebrate their spacecraft's safe landing in November 2018.

The Best Books About Mars, By the Mars Explorers Themselves

Firsthand accounts of Mars exploration by the people who run the robots.

A scene from "Into Space," produced by the German VR studio Faber Courtial. First Step covers the Apollo voyages of the 1960s. Second Step looks ahead to future moon and Mars exploration.

Five Space Experiences to Try With Your New VR Headset

The technology is getting better, and so is the content.

Shepard shields his eyes from the bright sun at Apollo 14’s Fra Mauro landing site, February 1971.

He Was the Fifth Man on the Moon, But That Wasn’t His Most Famous Flight

Two trips, a decade apart, spanned the most exciting era in space history.

The three-legged Surveyor 3 (an engineering model will be on display in the National Air and Space Museum's new Destination Moon gallery) had a TV camera for photographing its surroundings and a digger-scraper to test the lunar soil.

The Robots That Paved the Way For Apollo

Then as now, machines preceded the humans.

The National Air and Space Museum's newest acquisition arrives at its new home: the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.

The National Air and Space Museum Gets Its First F/A-18 Fighter

A Hornet comes to Hazy.

Astronaut Karen Nyberg enjoys the magnificent view from the ISS Cupola in 2013.

Work, Float, Eat, Dream: Life on the International Space Station

We asked some of the people who've spent the most time on the ISS: What's it like up there?

Mars (photographed here by the European Mars Express orbiter) has a thin atmosphere--useful for landers parachuting down to the surface, and the subject of interest for orbiters like the UAE's Hope spacecraft.

This Month, Three Countries Are Heading Off to Mars

A mini-armada of landers and orbiters is about to descend on the Red Planet.

Still far from home, the Apollo 13 astronauts photographed Earth during their long, harrowing trip back from the moon.

Relive the Drama of Apollo 13 in Real Time, As It Happened

A new multimedia site creates the historic mission 50 years later.

Al Worden during a countdown demonstration in preparation for his Apollo 15 flight in 1971.

Al Worden, the Poet of Apollo 15

For this moon voyager, technical debriefings weren’t fulfilling enough.

A new look at old film revealed what was going on in the dark during the Apollo 11 mission.

Historian Unveils Never-Seen Footage of Armstrong and Aldrin on the Moon

Amazing what you can find in the shadows, 50 years later.

Along with her photo, Luxana Nil-Ubol sent a note thanking Neil Armstrong for keeping his promise to send a mission patch and photo.

How a Pair of Teenagers Sneaked in to Meet Neil Armstrong During His 1969 World Tour

Some people don't take no for an answer.

An ascent stage lifts off from the moon, leaving the descent stage behind in this NASA depiction of a future human-rated lander. The agency says it’s open to other configurations, too.

To the Moon by 2024: Here’s the Plan

The first U.S. moonshot was done in a decade. Can NASA make it in half that time?

Thanks to geologist Farouk El-Baz (right), the astronauts in lunar orbit knew just what they were looking at, and we can all touch a moon rock 50 years later.

Twenty People Who Made Apollo Happen

Not all of them became famous.

On November 26, 2018, MarCO-B returned this color image of Mars (and its own high-gain antenna) as it flew past the planet at a distance of about 4,700 miles.

A CubeSat at Mars

For space exploration, small is powerful.

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