Air & Space Magazine

A big spaceship needs a big parachute: The world’s largest wind tunnel, at the Ames Research Center, can hold Mars Curiosity’s chute, but the next generation of parachutes won’t fit.

How to Land a House on Mars

NASA thought it knew, until an alarming failure last summer.

The survivors of FAU-571 as survivors as seen by their rescuers, December 22, 1972.

The Ghost of FAU 571

Any Uruguayan of my generation would recognize the tail number of the passenger jet that crashed in the Andes in 1972.

Conservators remove an original flight blanket, revealing a space for storing the supplies astronauts used to explore the lunar surface, such as cameras, geology equipment, and gear for an extended lunar stay.

The Nine Lives of an Apollo Moon Lander

How LM-2 came to impersonate the Apollo 11 lunar module.

An interceptor missile leaps from its launcher on Kwajelein Atoll to smash into a target impersonating a medium-range ballistic missile.

How to Stop a Nuke

The Army’s 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade does a dress rehearsal of a nuclear attack.

The Thunderpiglet and Other Famous Failures

Fail at the drawing board and you fail in the air.

Clifford Turpin in a Wright biplane; he mastered all the Wright Exhibition Team moves, including spirals, dips, and glides.

Clifford Turpin, King of the Air

He was one of the great original airshow pilots. Why did he hide his past?

Pictures? No problem. But don’t expect much information. A crew tends to the X-37B after it landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in October 2014, after 674 days in orbit.

What’s the X-37 Doing Up There?

The Air Force isn’t saying, so we asked other spaceplane experts.

The Space Fence radiates microwave energy in a broad fan that, as Earth rotates, covers almost the entire planet; it can also track individual objects.

How Things Work: Space Fence

The new early-warning system to protect spacecraft from orbiting junk.

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P-51 Mustang in Flight

A TKTYPE floats on Inland Lake in Ketchikan, Alaska.

Flight in Alaska

A place where—still—the best practical means of travel is the airplane.

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Falcon Tail Removal

This F-16 was retired from service and disassembled last November. The aircraft will be reassembled and parked at the entrance to the New York National Guard headquarters in Latham.

The experimental DC-X vehicle at engine ignition. The program was designed to develop the technologies needed for reusable, single-stage-to-orbit space travel.

Reusable Launch Vehicles and Lunar Return

The real value of the SpaceX and Blue Origin achievements is to make living on the Moon more feasible.

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The Veil Nebula

The Hubble Space Telescope took this image of the Veil Nebula, a small part of the enormous Cygnus Loop, the expanding remnant from an exploding star.

The Halley VI Research Station underneath the aurora in Antarctica.

The Making of an Antarctic Station

When your first five research stations get pummeled by the harsh polar environment, build one you can move.

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Antarctic Arrivals

A new crew lands in a Basler Turbo BT-67 (made from a retrofitted DC-3 airframe) at the French-Italian-run Concordia research station in Antarctica.

Test pilot Lawrence Clousing with a Lockheed P-80, Moffett Field, California, 1948. Note the NACA emblem, with no periods, on the wall of the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory.

Before the Meatball

NASA’s logo may have been cooler, but the NACA emblem was worn by famous pilots like Orville Wright and Eddie Rickenbacker.

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Hercules Squeegee Time

A crew chief wipes down the windshield of a C-130 Hercules before exercises for humanitarian operations.

An artist's conception of WFIRST

Hubble’s Great Grandchild

It’s not too early to start planning the space telescopes of the 2030s.

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Blinding Sunrise

Yet another spectacular sunrise as viewed from the International Space Station.

By our plastics will they know us.

Signs of Advanced Life—on Earth

Humans have left their mark in the geologic record, just as alien civilizations might on other worlds.

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