Air & Space Magazine

The Chinook's cargo capacity, speed, and high-altitude performance make it the ideal support aircraft for Special Operations teams in Afghanistan. Here, a CH-47D Chinook flies over the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center near Bridgeport, California.

The Final Flight of Extortion 17

It was the deadliest helicopter crash in the history of U.S. special operations. Why did it happen?

Kelly last lived on the space station—for a mere five months—in 2010-11.

Scott Kelly’s Year in Space

You think gravity wears you down? Try 12 months without it.

Learning to fly unmanned aircraft can now be part of a college education. A teacher at Arizona’s Embry-Riddle University readies a radio-control airplane for his student’s lesson.

UAV U.

How to train the next generation of pilots—who will never take to the skies.

In Vietnam, the U.S. Navy used the F-4 for ground attack.

What Couldn’t the F-4 Phantom Do?

A tribute to McDonnell’s masterpiece fighter jet.

At its November 4, 1954 public debut, an R3Y Tradewind draws a crowd to Convair’s plant in San Diego.

Last of the Great Flying Boats

Why the Convair Tradewind was a beautiful, versatile, fast failure.

Airline Merger Wars

The battle for the soul of an airline

Artists have imagined Pluto, but mission scientists are loathe to predict what the first close-ups will reveal. Craters? Mountains? A subsurface ocean? All are possible.

Pluto at Last

Nine years after leaving Earth, New Horizons closes in on the last of the Original Nine planets, and whatever lies beyond.

In 2000, Predators began reconnaissance missions for the CIA in Afghanistan. After 9/11, they flew armed, becoming the most controversial weapon since the atom bomb.

Hellfire Meets Predator

How the drone was cleared to shoot.

Using a “Top Secret” Situation Report, visitors in a new role-playing game use the vast collections at the Steven F. Udvar‑Hazy Center to locate a missing aircraft, and propose a rescue plan for the pilots and their technology.

A Game For Your Inner Spy

Visitors learn about the cold war in a new role-playing game

Using jet blast to melt ice backfired in 1958 but works for a Tu-134 in 2006.

Need a T-33 to De-Ice a Runway? No Problem

My first crack at “piloting” a real jet didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped

Stephan Ulamec, Fred Jansen, Andrea Accomazzo, Elsa Montagnon, and the author monitor telemetry from Rosetta the morning of the historic landing.

The (Nail-Biting) First Landing on a Comet

How it went down inside the Rosetta control room that night.

The B-52 Just Keeps on Flying

Designed in the 1940s, the BUFF shows no sign of retiring.

The U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster (here flying near Hawaii) made its first airshow appearance in China.

U.S. Debut at Chinese Airshow

A C-17 Globemaster wowed visitors at the Zhuhai Airshow

What shaped our solar system? By studying a meteorite that formed before the planets, scientists discovered that magnetic fields played a large part.

A Meteorite Older than Earth Could Tell Us How Planets Were Made

Discovering a solar system in a grain of sand.

Before the A-380 flew its first passenger, Airbus showed that more than 800 people could evacuate safely in an emergency.

A Ride on the World’s Largest Passenger Jet

My first trip on an Airbus A-380, at a time when the giant airliner’s future is in doubt.

None

Ghost Galaxies

The Hubble Space Telescope turned to Abell 2744, also called Pandora's Cluster, and saw the ghostly glow (here in blue) of galaxies that have been long since ripped apart by the gravitational pull from the other galaxies nearby.

None

Having Amelia for Tea

This photo shows Amelia Earhart after she made a forced landing in a field near Derry, Ireland in 1932. The <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nlireland/6423929689/">National Library of Ireland has the record</a> from the May 23 <em>Irish Independent</em> which reads: <blockquote>...the hospitality she had received after making her forced descent, for two minutes later she was in the cottage of Mr. and Mrs. Peter McCallion, who put their home at her disposal. Almost at the same time Mr. Gallagher arrived and persuaded Miss Earhart to accompany him to his home, where Mrs. Gallagher had tea already prepared." </blockquote>The Library adds: "There was no account of how the McCallions took to having the Gallaghers scoop them in what must have been the tea party of their lives!" The Lockheed Vega in the photo can be seen at the National Air and Space Museum on the National Mall.

U.S. Navy flight deck personnel taxi an AV-8B Harrier assigned to Marine Attack Squadron 542 across the flight deck aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard in 2012. Should amphibious assault ships replace the traditional aircraft carrier?

The Future of Aircraft Carriers

A debate at the Naval Academy Museum leads to some surprising conclusions.

Artist’s conception of an Earth-like planet orbiting an evolved star that has formed a "planetary nebula."

Astronomers Just Doubled the Number of Potentially Habitable Planets

Another step closer to finding a second Earth

None

Coming Down in the Wash

The U.S. Air Force 366th Fighter Wing train for operations in realistic scenarios at Sailor Creek Range Complex, Idaho, where this UH-60 Black Hawk set down among the tumbleweeds.

Page 107 of 320