Editors' Picks
Area 51: Origins
America’s once-secret air base had humble beginnings.
Need for Speed
Airplanes with a mission: Fly faster.
Beyond the Moon
It’s not a place, exactly. But it could be NASA’s next destination.
The Invention of Flight
Inventors, dreamers, daredevils, charlatans: Aviation's early years had them all.
Vietnam Memoir
Stories from the war that shaped a generation.
Page 33 of 51
The Daily Planet Blog
Flying While Female
China has selected its first two female astronauts, Space.com recently reported. But, unlike their male counterparts, females have to be married. “We believe married women would be more physically and psychologically mature,” Zhang Jianqui, the former deputy commander of China’s spaceflight program...
June 24, 2010
| By Rebecca Maksel
The Daily Planet Blog
Your Face in Space
With time running short for the space shuttle, NASA has come up with a way for the masses to journey with astronauts on the vehicle's two remaining voyages. Granted, it’s still impossible to actually hitch a ride to orbit, but you can upload and send a picture of yourself into space through NASA...
June 22, 2010
| By Mary McKillop
The Daily Planet Blog
The Immortal "Airplane!"
CNN.com readers responded enthusiastically to a report of a flight attendant sitting in for an ill co-pilot with quotes from Airplane!musishun Timmy, have you ever seen a grown man naked?Zykman Get me Rex Kramer!DBCOOPER1 you're Kareem Abdul Jubbar! .....no I'm not , I'm Roger Murdock!MadCityBabe "...
June 22, 2010
| By Pat Trenner
The Once and Future Moon Blog
A Wetter Moon Impacts Understanding of Lunar Origin
Is there water on the Moon?We know now that the answer to that question is a resounding Yes! As information continues to emerge from a wide range of studies, it’s evident that we’ve just begun to understand the process of the creation, movement and history of water on the Moon and its prevalence.A...
June 19, 2010
| By Paul D. Spudis
The Daily Planet Blog
IKAROS Unfurled
We had hoped that Japan's IKAROS solar sail would work as advertised, and it did. Here's an animated image of the fully deployed sail, taken by a "separation camera" from a short distance away.In other happenings:
The Hayabusa asteroid sample return capsule came home in spectacular style last wee...
June 17, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
The Daily Planet Blog
Batman (well, Squirrelman)
Skydiving is turning into skygliding—who wants to fall like a stone when you can fly like a bird? Or, we should say, a bat...well, most accurately, a flying squirrel.In recent years, with the help of special suits that incorporate webbing from the wrists to the ankles and between the legs, skydiver...
June 16, 2010
| By Mike Klesius
The Daily Planet Blog
The World War II History of the Wright Military Flyer
The two-seat biplane looks somewhat flimsy. Sure, it was cutting-edge in 1909 when the Wrights demonstrated it for the U.S. Army Signal Corps at Fort Meyer. But how would it fare during World War II?Fortunately, the Wright Military Flyer never had to compete in any dogfights. But it did travel from...
June 14, 2010
| By Rebecca Maksel
The Daily Planet Blog
Hayabusa Limps Home
If Hayabusa were a human explorer instead of a spacecraft, the first thing it might do on Sunday after returning to Earth from a seven-year voyage is pour a stiff drink.Japan's first mission to an asteroid has generally been a success, and a major step up for the nation's planetary program. But man...
June 11, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
The Daily Planet Blog
Admit It, You Want One of These
Engineers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have built a "Distributed Flight Array"—self-assembling, yet—that could someday be used to airlift objects. See it in action:
June 10, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
The Daily Planet Blog
Good Times for Ken Bowersox
Most of the credit for Friday's near-perfect launch of the new Falcon 9 rocket rightly goes to Elon Musk, whose unusual blend of vision, competence, and almost compulsive candor (what other aerospace executive has the nerve to a) publish fixed launch prices, and b) openly criticize a U.S. Senator?)...
June 05, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
The Daily Planet Blog
All Eyes on Falcon 9
SpaceX CEO and chief designer Elon Musk could be forgiven if he feels a little under-appreciated on the eve of his Falcon 9 rocket's first launch (liftoff is scheduled for 11 a.m. tomorrow from Cape Canaveral).The guy has been trying his damnedest for several years to bring down the cost of reac...
June 03, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
The Daily Planet Blog
520 Days in a Can
Three Russians, a Chinese, a Frenchman and an Italian walk into a simulation chamber...and don't come out for 17 months.That's pretty much the idea behind Mars 500, which starts tomorrow and aims to be the highest-fidelity simulation of a Mars mission ever conducted—as well as the first to last as ...
June 02, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
The Daily Planet Blog
Stupid Pilot Tricks 2.0
Several people received minor injuries when the powerful rotors of a Marine Corps V-22 Osprey, landing at a Staten Island park during a Memorial Day aerial demonstration, created mini-tornadoes of dirt, brush, and debris. Air & Space hereby bestows upon the crew the 2010 Stupid Pilot Award, fir...
June 02, 2010
| By Pat Trenner
The Daily Planet Blog
The Battle of Britain Beacon
To mark this year's 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, the Royal Air Force Museum has begun initial planning for a new exhibition building, tentatively called the Battle of Britain Beacon.The 350-foot-tall structure (taller than Big Ben, the Statue of Liberty, and the United States Capitol...
June 01, 2010
| By Rebecca Maksel
The Daily Planet Blog
Holiday Sampler
For the Memorial Day weekend, an assortment of news from the world of air and space:► The field of hypersonic flight has a new record: The Air Force's X-51A Waverider reached Mach 5 in a 200-second scramjet engine burn over the Pacific on Wednesday. Video below:► What looked at first like a sma...
May 28, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
The Once and Future Moon Blog
American Heroes
Memorial Day weekend is upon us, so thoughts of heroes and remembering them are foremost in my mind. As a kid growing up in the Sixties, I saw a lot of change in our country. There was upheaval and tension here at home and around the world but the U.S. space program was a shining light that inspir...
May 28, 2010
| By Paul D. Spudis
The Daily Planet Blog
Why They Stopped Flying
The risk to airplanes from the recent eruption of Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland was more than just the danger of jet engines shutting down in flight. The ash could also have led to long-term damage that's harder to spot. After a NASA DC-8 flew through a volcanic ash cloud in 2000, researchers...
May 27, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
The Daily Planet Blog
Uniform Justice
Ah, uniforms. People either love 'em or hate 'em. One could argue that the U.S. military has a good number of attractive uniforms: think of the Marine Corps dress uniform, the blue Army service uniform, the Navy's full dress whites, and the Air Force flightsuit.But it seems that our illustrious mil...
May 25, 2010
| By Rebecca Maksel
The Daily Planet Blog
Slurp or Gulp?
"Well the rain exploded with a mighty crash, as we fell into the sun..." As a kid, when I heard Paul McCartney sing those words, I sort of envisioned this:Now astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have envisioned something like this happening to a planet orbiting a star 600 light-years away....
May 24, 2010
| By Mike Klesius
The Daily Planet Blog
Waverider Gears Up for First Flight
The Air Force's X-51A Waverider is being readied for its first hypersonic test flight on Tuesday, May 25. If all goes well, the scramjet-powered vehicle will fly for five minutes and hit Mach 6 before coming down into the ocean off the California coast. Project engineers hope to collect lots of dat...
May 21, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
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