Air & Space Magazine | Smithsonian Magazine

Thunderbirds Lineup

The U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds perform during the Cheyenne Frontier Days in Wyoming.

October 13, 2016

This new 39-foot-diameter impact crater formed sometime between October 25, 2012 and April 21, 2013.

Lunar Craters May Be Forming Faster Than We Thought

New images show a more active surface on the Moon.

October 12, 2016

Aurora Flight Sciences' LightningStrike concept

Uber Looks to the Skies

One day, you may be able to summon a drone.

October 11, 2016

Dusty Star Formation

A new image from ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile gives an incredibly sharp view of the dust obscuring the star formation region in Messier 78.

October 10, 2016

Listen up, aliens: ESA's deep space antenna in Cebreros is about to broadcast.

Is Beaming Messages to Other Stars a Wise Idea?

The debate continues, even as a new transmission is aimed at Polaris.

October 7, 2016

Does it Lift?

An HL-10 lifting body model gets tested at the Full Scale Tunnel at NASA's Langley Research Center in the 1960s. (See engineer at the mouth of the tunnel for scale.)

October 7, 2016

A view of activity in the Earth's magnetosphere today, courtesy of the Space Weather Prediction Center.

Now You Can Get Regional Forecasts of Space Weather

Solar storm warnings just got a little more user-friendly.

October 6, 2016

The city of Lilongwe, Malawi in Africa has grown from a population of 19,000 50 years ago to over one million in 2015. This image was taken by Landsat, as part of its mission to monitor the changes on our planet.

October 5, 2016

A British soldier releases Prox Dynamics' Black Hornet

Forget the Predator, Military Drones Are Getting Smaller

Look out for the little ones.

October 4, 2016

This Rosetta image of the “head” of the comet, which resembles the shape of a duck, was taken from a distance of about 10 miles during the final descent on September 30.

Farewell, Rosetta

The comet mission ends with a last hurrah.

October 3, 2016

Pave Hawk Eclipse

An HH-60 Pave Hawk passes in front of the sun during exercises over Nevada.

October 3, 2016

Goodbye, Rosetta

On September 30, the <a href="http://m.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_finale_set_for_30_September" target="_blank">Rosetta spacecraft's mission comes to an end</a>. The ESA comet orbiter reached Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in August 2014 and a few months later sent the Philae lander to the surface—the first ever successful landing on a comet. Now that the comet has swung around the sun and is headed farther and farther away, Rosetta would be unable to collect enough power from its solar cells or communicate with Earth. This morning, mission control directed Rosetta to crash into the comet, and <a href="http://rosetta.esa.int/">collected some incredible up-close observations</a> from the spacecraft.

September 30, 2016