Air & Space Magazine

How the 737 Got Its Hamster Mouth

The top-selling commercial airliner engine started with a strange design.

Artist's concept of the Interplanetary NanoSpacecraft Pathfinder In Relevant Environment (INSPIRE) CubeSat.

CubeSats to the Moon (Mars and Saturn, Too)

The next generation of planetary explorers.

Festival goers enjoy last year's “re-enactment” of the day a piece of Sputnik IV landed in Manitowic.

When Sputnik Crashed in Wisconsin

Half a century later, the town of Manitowoc commemorates its biggest day ever.

Birth of the Bugatti

Original design sketches show how the raceplane evolved.

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Introducing Future Martian

NASA's Michael Meyer, the lead scientist of the Mars Exploration Program, shows off its Mars 2020 rover. Though built on the same platform and using many of the same systems as the famous Curiosity Rover currently rolling across the Red Planet, the Mars 2020 Rover will bring newer, more sophisticated scientific instruments to Mars, providing scientists a wealth of new data.

A Hawker Jet Provost and a Lockheed F-94 Starfire at Pima.

The Dusty Gems of Pima

Tucson’s famous air and space museum was well worth a stop on my western tour.

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Meet the New Kid

At NASA's Langley Research Center, VIPs gather around a model of NASA's latest experiment: an electrically-powered, distributed-thrust test bed. While most electric aircraft to date are close derivatives of their fossil-fueled predecessors, battery power makes practical things that don't make much sense on conventional aircraft. One such advantage is distributed thrust. Conventional fuel is most efficiently used when taken from a single tank (or series of tanks) and sent to a single engine, which provides thrust. Batteries, in contrast, work almost as efficiently separated as they do grouped together, so why not spread them out and give each battery its own engine to power?

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The Last Phantom

One of the last flying McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantoms lands at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. Though the U.S. Air Force has long since retired the F-4 from service, they are regularly pulled from storage and restored as unmanned flying targets. Though stored at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, they are converted into targets elsewhere, and so for a brief period are the crewed fighter aircraft they once were. This particular F-4 is being used as a chase plane, tailing its replacement, the Lockheed Martin QF-16: There are so few restorable F-4s left at Davis-Monthan that the military is replacing it with old Lockheed Martin F-16s, just as F-16s once replaced F-4s in active service.

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Flying While Standing Still

Standard Oil's Lockheed Vega, painted as an eagle, sits quietly on the ramp. The Vega was Lockheed's first aircraft, and one of the fastest and most capable of its time. The National Air and Space Museum has two Vegas, flown by Amelia Earhart and Wylie Post respectively on record-breaking flights

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The Icing on the Cake

After loading Orbital Sciences' Cygnus resupply capsule for a flight to the International Space Station, the last piece of the Antares rocket - the aerodynamic fairing - is placed snugly atop. Aerodynamic fairings are crucial for protecting the delicate spacecraft on its way through the thickest part of the atmosphere, but are jettisoned soon after as the rocket makes its way into space. This particular fairing was discarded on July 11th as part of a successful launch from NASA's Wallops Island launch facility in Virginia.

“Miracle on the Hudson” Hero Gets a Dunking at Oshkosh

...by one of his former passengers

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The New Dawn Patrol

Two unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) - more colloquially called 'drones' - at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada. A General Atomics MQ-1B awaits takeoff at dawn as its larger cousin the MQ-9 takes the runway. The UAVs are controlled by nearby pilots during taxi, takeoff and landing, but while airborne they can be piloted from anywhere on Earth via satellite link.

A student samples the goo at Pitch Lake in Trinidad.

Life in a Lake of Oil

And that may have implications for Saturn’s moon Titan

Asteroid 253 Mathilde, as seen by the Shoemaker-NEAR spacecraft in 1997. This asteroid is a C-type, which is the likely class of object to contain chemically bound water.

Moon First—Mine the Asteroids Later

Let’s learn how to extract space resources closer to home.

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Douglas B-26 Over Korea

A Douglas A-26 bombs a rail yard outside occupied Kunsan, South Korea, during the Korean War. The A-26 design dates from World War II; though the post-war era saw rapid adoption of new technologies, many World War II-vintage aircraft were taken out of storage for Korea.

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The Oshkosh Parking Lot

The typical parking lot at Air Venture 2014 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. For a brief period each year, Oshkosh's sleepy Wittman Regional becomes the busiest airport in the world. Wittman and nearby airfields quickly run out of parking space, filled by nearly everything from rare warbirds to humble Cessnas.

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Hot Act at Oshkosh

Melissa Pembertom on her 500-hp Edge 540 tangles with Skip Stewart in his highly modified Pitts in one of the most spectacular acts on the show circuit.

A Curtiss JN-4H chugs over Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, one of the few sites where you can see World War I replicas fly.

A Spotter’s Guide to World War I Replicas

Where to see a Jenny in flight

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Where's Reverse On This Thing?

A Boeing AV-8B Harrier is pushed back aboard the USS Peleliu (LHA 5) in preparation for takeoff. Like a commercial jetliner needs outside help to push back from the terminal, the Harrier needs help getting to takeoff position at the back of the ship.

The last image taken by Ranger 7, less than two-tenths of a second before hitting the moon on July 31, 1964. The spacecraft was about 480 meters above the lunar surface when transmission began; impact came before the photo finished sending, so the right half is cut off. The resolution in this final image is about half a meter.

The First Close-Up Photos of the Moon

Fifty years ago this week, Ranger 7 showed us what the lunar surface looks like.

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