Art of the Airport Tower takes you on a photographic journey to airports in the United States and around the globe. Smithsonian photographer Carolyn Russo explores the varied forms and functions of ...

When Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond reported to the Pentagon for his first day as Chief of Space Operations for the United States Space Force (USSF) in 2019, he began the process of standing up the first ...

On June 19, 1944, as United States and Japanese forces engaged one another during the Battle of Saipan in the Mariana Islands, the VF-2 fighter squadron from the USS Hornet flew numerous missions to ...

Pilotless aircraft have been around longer than you might think. In 1898, newspapers heralded the dawn of a new age with the invention of a device that would “render fleets and guns useless.” Physical ...

These days, it takes seven hours to fly from New York to London, compared to under three hours flying at twice the speed of sound on the Concorde. When I started my internship at the National Air and ...

Flying boats opened up travel destinations around the world—then they went to war. Twilight glimmered in the western sky as the large aircraft began its descent to the Tagus River in Lisbon, Portugal.

When NASA astronaut Ellison Onizuka rode Space Shuttle Discovery into space on shuttle mission STS-51-C in 1985, he made history on several counts. He was the first Asian American astronaut, the first ...

There’s a reason you don’t know the names of the first American women to fly combat missions. The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower tore through the waters of the Persian Gulf on November 15, 1994. On the ...

Leonardo da Vinci created masterpieces of art and sculpture. Equally remarkable, his aggregate achievements in engineering, mathematics, anatomy, geology, physics, music, military technology, ...

One of the icons of the National Air and Space Museum’s location on the National Mall, before we began our massive renovation project, was the black-and-white German V-2 ballistic missile. Ever since ...

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project...will be ...

Picture the Earth from above. In your mind's eye, what do you see? Today, we have access to air and space technology that lets us see various views of the Earth with ease. However, before the ...