CURRENT ISSUE
May 2016
Features
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Let’s Go Antiquing
What’s it like to fly the earliest airplanes? Ten pilots talk about the dangers and demands.
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Scramble Seawolves!
When SEALs in the Mekong Delta needed help, salvation came from a pair of beat-up Hueys.
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Meet the Drone that Staked out Osama Bin Laden’s Neighborhood
The RQ-170 provided a secret, and vital, piece of the intel puzzle.
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See, Hear, Sniff: How Airborne Spies Collect Intel
Spyplanes are filled with gizmos that gather information in three major ways.
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Life in the Universe Special: Would We Know Alien Life If We Saw It?
And have we already seen it on Mars?
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Life in the Universe Special: Life Among the Gas Giants
Something is there in the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
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Born to Race
Just how close a pair of custom-built racers came to unseating the kings of Reno.
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Campaign by Helicopter
In 1948 “All the Way with LBJ” meant scooting around Texas in a Bell 47D.
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Airplane of the Year
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Departments
Interview: Chris Carter
With the return of “The X-Files,” the creator of the hit TV series talks about Roswell, aliens, and ideas he’ll share at Smithsonian magazine’s Future festival this month.
Technically Speaking: Stealth Before Stealth
Practicing the art of invisibility in the 1970s.
In The Museum: From Carriers to Space Capsules
The veteran astronaut is honored with the National Air and Space Museum Lifetime Achievement trophy.
The Shuttle’s First Crisis
Into the Black: A detailed account of STS-1, the first space shuttle mission to reach orbit.