How Things Work: Flying Upside Down

The tricks that keep the engine from knowing it’s not right side up.

Infrared Countermeasures

The systems that cool the threat from heat-seeking missiles.

X-rays enter Chandra’s pairs of nested mirrors.

How Things Work: Chandra X-Ray

The Chandra X-Ray Telescope, explained.

All the shuttles insulating tiles are marked for identification, useful for installation and accident investigation. Just 15 percent of the tiles on the shuttles underside pose 85 percent of the risk of a tile-related accident.

Shuttle Tiles

Why the space shuttle can withstand reentry temperatures up to 2,300 degrees.

Hush Kits

Engineer to airplane: Stifle

The IFLOLS aboard the USS George Washington.

The Meatball

Pilots who make it safely to the deck of an aircraft carrier have seen the light.

The Annotated Airport

A guide to the meaning of the myriad signs, lines, circles, arrows, numbers, letters, and lights on the airport grounds.

Even the wing tips and the midwing "super pods," which look like fuel tanks, are crammed with sensors and electronics. Its paint scheme makes it look stealthy, but a U-2 is detectable by radar.

The U-Deuce

The secret to a spyplane's eternal youth is a new suite of gadgets installed on a classic chassis.

In the Icing Research Tunnel of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio, granular “rime ice” chunks obliterate an airfoil’s smooth surface.

Electro- mechanical Deicing

Ice kills. That's why engineers continue to invent new ways to keep it off airplane wings.

Supporting Cast

In which we survey the variety of objects to which a jet engine can be affixed.

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