Air & Space Magazine | Smithsonian Magazine

Apollo astronauts -- and a couple of visiting cosmonauts -- at a backyard party in Houston in 1970. Note Pete Conrad (wearing a tie) and Jim McDivitt (behind him and to his right) both holding cigarettes.

When NASA Told Its Astronauts to Quit Smoking

Even in 1959, it was considered bad for PR.

May 9, 2014

Rent-a-Helo Parking Lot

New Mexico Air National Guard AH-64 Apaches make a refueling stop at Las Cruces airport.

May 9, 2014

NASA astronaut Mike Fincke uses the amateur radio on board the International Space Station to talk with crew at the Palmer Research Station in Antarctica in 2004.

Got a Ham Radio? Call an Astronaut

With new upgrades, you can even videochat as the ISS orbits overhead.

May 8, 2014

Just another day at the office: Bill Dana with the HL-10 lifting body in 1968, as a B-52 flies overhead.

Test Pilot Bill Dana’s Worst Fear: Embarrassing Himself in Front of his Peers

Flying the X-15 and HL-10 was nothing compared to facing his fellow test pilots.

May 7, 2014

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory recently <a href="http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2014/deml241/">found evidence</a> of a companion star that survived the blast of a nearby supernova explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

May 7, 2014

The Big Guy is back. We're going to need some F-15s and HALO jumpers.

Kadena Air Base: We Could Take Godzilla

The Air Force’s largest combat wing is ready to master the mayhem

May 6, 2014

Artist's conception of Kepler 186-f. Is it habitable? Hard to say.

Confirming Life On Other Planets Will be Tough—From Earth

It may even be impossible.

May 5, 2014

Globemaster Inspection

May 5, 2014

Liberator En Route

This photo, from the San Diego Air and Space Museum archive, is from the collection of Sam Gotwalt, a radio operator on a B-24 Liberator during World War II.

May 2, 2014

Sunflowers in Space

A young sunflower plant grows aboard the International Space Station.

April 30, 2014

Airfields in Alaska's Aleutian chain (pictured is Tanaga) started getting steel mat runways in 1942. Marston was better than mud, but a hard landing could bounce a small fighter 30 feet, and heavy bombers made the mat ride up in waves.

These Portable Runways Helped Win the War in the Pacific

Low-tech and still used today, “Marston Mats” were among the most important inventions of World War II.

April 29, 2014

Both on the ground (volunteer satellite trackers in Pretoria, South Africa, above) and in the air, volunteers watched the skies for the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Moonwatch Network.

Pilots—Watch the Skies!

In the 1960s, as part of a Smithsonian project, airline pilots acted as lookouts for satellites, meteors, and UFOs.

April 28, 2014

Eagles at Dusk

Two F-15 Strike Eagles at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

April 28, 2014

U.S. Army helicopters pour machine-gun fire into the tree line to cover the advance of South Vietnamese ground troops as they attack a Viet Cong camp 18 miles north of Tay Ninh, near the Cambodian border, in March 1965.

Vietnam: A Photographic History

Unforgettable images from the AP photographers who covered the war in Southeast Asia.

April 25, 2014

Training in a Vacuum

European Space Agency astronaut and Italian Air Force officer Sam Cristoforetti will be headed to the International Space Station later this year. She posted this photo of her in a Russian Sokol spacesuit inside a vacuum chamber to her Twitter account (<a href="https://twitter.com/AstroSamantha">@AstroSamantha</a>).

April 25, 2014