Air & Space Magazine

Winner Hillary Andales accepts her “science Oscar” from actress Lily Collins (left) and philanthropist Julia Milner (next to Collins), as her stage escort waits.

Enter Video Contest, Win $350,000

The Breakthrough Junior Challenge to high school students: Explain a big scientific idea with a little film.

Archivist Patti Williams pulls an item from the more than 1,920 cubic feet of material in the National Air and Space Museum’s Technical Reference Files.

80,000 Ways to Search the Archive

Plumbing the secrets of the Museum’s Tech Files.

Venus crossing the disk of the sun in 2012, as seen by the Japanese Hinode satellite.

Before Launching Probes to Venus, NASA Had to Figure Out Exactly Where It Was

The uncertainties of early space navigation led a young JPL engineer to launch the field of radar astronomy.

Lining up on approach to London Heathrow Airport is the pathway out of what may be the world’s most expensive traffic jam: tens of airplanes flying holding patterns nearby, waiting for their turn in line.

Air Traffic Control Enters the 21st Century

NextGen looks to overhaul navigation and communication in U.S. airspace.

The author and Dick Anderson (left and center in news clip) were trained to fly the F3H Demon, but it was a rented Mooney Mk-20A—one with an unreliable fuel gauge—that bedeviled them.

Too Busy to Be Scared

Two fighter pilots’ vacation in a Mooney turned into an unanticipated adventure.

An artist’s conception of SPIDER, the lightweight array proposed by Lockheed Martin to replace the huge—and hugely expensive—space telescopes. SPIDER dumps the cumbersome mirror.

Could Future Telescopes Do Without the Mirror?

Tomorrow’s Hubble might be the size of a dinner plate.

Like many aces, Edward Mannock was a sensitive young man, aware of the danger facing him during the Great War.

The Dark Side of Glory

An early glimpse of PTSD in the letters of World War I aces.

Once the scourge of the Pacific, a Mitsubishi A6M3 Zero cruises placidly over Puget Sound, part of the stunningly restored Flying Heritage air force.

Where Real Warbirds Go to Fly

At the Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum, the thrill of standing face to face with the past.

Members of Sich Battalion, a pro-Ukrainian volunteer force formed in 2015, provide cover fire for returning comrades who have fired an anti-tank rocket in a once-prosperous suburb of Donetsk. Volunteer units have since been integrated into the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

The Fighting Drones of Ukraine

In garages and warehouses around Kiev, an army of gadgeteers takes on the Russian war machine.

Super-pressure balloons—like this one being inflated in New Zealand last May—can stay aloft longer. Scientists want to use them at the South Pole, where they might circle over the continent 100 days while observing deep into the universe.

100 Days Over the South Pole

A science balloon floats closer to the stars.

James Banning and Thomas Allen planned the route for their coast-to-coast flight to include towns where they knew someone, or which they knew had African-American communities.

The First Black Airmen to Fly Across America

They took off with $25 and a dream.

Station crews already have a robot handyman for outside work: the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, better known as Dextre.

Robot Helpers Are Coming to the Space Station

The astronauts are about to get some mechanical assistance.

Astronomy intern Danielle Rowland stands with a model of the Hubble Space Telescope at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

Danielle Rowland, Astrophysics Intern

A summer job at the Space Telescope Science Institute.

The Bell X-1 “Glamorous Glennis,” shown here in flight over the Mojave Desert in October 1947, the same month it broke the sound barrier, would likely make anyone’s Top 25 list.

The 25 Most Influential Aircraft of All Time

A new book lists the best of the best.

Sinuous rilles (lava channels and tubes) of the Rima Prinz complex in Oceanus Procellarum. Some segments of rilles are roofed over to form a tube (the "gap" between the linear features at right center), which might be drained of lava, forming a cave. This area is in a mare region, where internally generated bodies of liquid rock (magma) are erupted as lava.

About Those “Polar Lava Tubes”

When is a discovery not a discovery? When it’s just plain wrong.

One of the drones intercepted following an attack on Russian bases.

When is a Drone Swarm Not a Swarm?

A recent attack on Russian bases was coordinated, but hardly an example of artificial intelligence.

Animal life in the Ediacaran era, from 635 to 541 million years ago, was strictly “low energy.”

Did the First Animals Live in a World Without Oxygen?

A new study suggests the answer may be yes.

John Young, just before the launch of his first space mission, Gemini 3, in 1965.

John Young, True Believer

The longest-serving astronaut was also among the most visionary.

Visiting spaceship? Nope, just a SpaceX rocket launch over California.

When Reporting News About Aliens, Caution Is Advised

Astronomers struggle with how to handle announcements (or non-announcements) about extraterrestrial contact.

Permanently shadowed regions (shown in blue) cover about three percent of the moon's south pole, and should be good places to find water ice.

How Much Water Is on the Moon?

What we know, how we know it, and what we still need to know.

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