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Editors' Picks

What the astronauts really said

Apollo "onboard voice" recordings captured the moon astronauts' conversations -- cussing and all -- when no one else was listening.

Drones for Hire

The newest eyes in the sky are drawing the attention of power companies, conservation groups, and the ACLU.

Five Reasons to Like NASA’s Asteroid Retrieval Mission

So it's not the Moon or Mars. Get over it.

The Invention of Flight

Inventors, dreamers, daredevils, charlatans: Aviation's early years had them all.

Disaster at Xichang

An eyewitness speaks publicly for the first time about history’s worst launch accident.

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Space Exploration

Page 26 of 45

Talismanic Thinking

Wild claims are being tossed about regarding the future U.S. space program.  Recipes for success are touted and e-mailed around – concepts based more on wishful thinking than on solid science and engineering.  My friend Rand Simberg refers to those who would replicate anew the means we devised to g...
February 27, 2010 | By Paul D. Spudis

Race and the Space Race

PRX Radio ran an interesting piece over the weekend, narrated by former astronaut Mae Jemison, about race and the early space program. NASA and the civil rights movement came of age in the same decade, and by chance, the agency's main centers were in places like Texas, Alabama, and Florida—the hear...
February 25, 2010 | By Tony Reichhardt

A Lunar Visionary

My good friend Klaus Heiss is resting in the hospital after recently suffering a stoke.  Klaus is not widely known or familiar to many in the space community, but over the years, he has had a major impact on our national space program – a major player in both the Shuttle program and in helping to p...
February 23, 2010 | By Paul D. Spudis

More Detail From NASA

Those who say NASA is giving up on human space exploration may want to take a look at the details the agency just released about where its budgeted money is going over the next several years. The table on page EXP-3 of this document shows more than $15 billion over the next five years allocated for...
February 23, 2010 | By Mike Klesius

Falcon 9 on the Launch Pad

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket—which the company hopes will usher in a new era of lower-cost commercial space travel—has arrived at its launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida.Engineers are checking out the vehicle's fuel, liquid oxygen, and gas pressure systems. Once they pass muster, the launch team will...
February 22, 2010 | By Tony Reichhardt

Bill Gordon, Father of the Arecibo Observatory

William Gordon, the Cornell University engineer who dreamed up the world's largest dish antenna, died this week at the age of 92. His recollections of the Arecibo Telescope's early days were included in a story that ran in our October 1997 issue, not long after the observatory was upgraded with new...
February 19, 2010 | By Tony Reichhardt

The Astronaut Olympics

The other night, while most Americans were sleeping, the astronauts on the International Space Station decided to have a little fun. The Winter Olympics were on, the crew had a few hours of free time, and here's what they came up with:A couple things strike me about this scene, and the rest of the ...
February 17, 2010 | By Tony Reichhardt

Confusing the Means and the Ends

The release of the proposed NASA budget and new “direction” has led to an intense “cage fight” in the blogosphere over who has the best rocket and the best architecture.  Many “New Space” advocates are ecstatic, viewing the cancellation of the Constellation program as vindication of their view that...
February 13, 2010 | By Paul D. Spudis

And Now, Starring the Sun

Quick, what's the most photogenic object in our solar system? Earth? Yeah, pretty. Saturn? Lovely rings. But for sheer drama and majesty, it's hard to beat pictures of the sun taken from spacecraft like SOHO and STEREO.Those satellites are about to be eclipsed (sorry) by the Solar Dynamics Observat...
February 11, 2010 | By Tony Reichhardt

The 2009 Class of NASA astronauts: All dressed up, but nowhere to go.

No Stimulus Plan for Astronauts

For NASA's flying corps, it looks like 1975 all over again.
February 05, 2010 | By Matthew Hersch

The Price of Human Spaceflight

So NASA’s Constellation program is dead. No more Ares rockets, no government-funded Orion capsule.With all due respect to the engineers who worked on the program, we’re better off without it.After six years and $9 billion spent, Constellation only managed a single suborbital test launch—of mostly m...
February 04, 2010 | By Tony Reichhardt

Vision Impaired

The release of the new proposed budget for NASA has unleashed a blizzard of news articles and commentary.  The administration proposes to terminate Constellation, the agency effort to design and build a new space transportation system to carry people to low Earth orbit and beyond.  In its place, th...
February 03, 2010 | By Paul D. Spudis

When Asteroids Collide

Is that what's going on in this Hubble Space Telescope image?
February 02, 2010 | By Tony Reichhardt

Live from the Space Station

As reality TV, let's just say it lacks drama. So far I haven't seen a single shouting match. But beginning today, you can watch live as NASA astronauts go about their daily business inside the International Space Station.The "Live From the ISS" link on NASA's space station web page shows you the vi...
February 01, 2010 | By Tony Reichhardt

No take-backs!

Meteorite enthusiasts—c'mon, what's not to love about a meteorite?—are abuzz over the news that the "Lorton meteorite," which smashed through the roof of a medical office outside Washington, D.C., on January 18, is the chondrite du jour in a controversy over who owns it.Doctors Marc Gallini and Fra...
January 29, 2010 | By Pat Trenner

Asteroid Insurance

Remember we told you the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) would be good at spotting near-Earth asteroids?Well, it is. And it has.Here (the red dot at center) is WISE's first find, a half-mile-wide chunk of rock called 2010 AB78, currently about 98 million miles from Earth. It's no threat,...
January 28, 2010 | By Tony Reichhardt

Trail of tears: Spirit

No More A-Roving

NASA’s Spirit rover goes into survival mode on Mars.
January 28, 2010 | By Michael Klesius

Sound Barrier Buster

On August 16, 1960, U.S. Air Force Captain Joe Kittinger stepped out of the gondola of a balloon at 102,800 feet above New Mexico wearing a pressure suit. In the thin air, he accelerated to 614 miles an hour in free fall before denser atmosphere slowed his plunge to a speed that allowed him to open...
January 26, 2010 | By Mike Klesius

Have We Forgotten What Exploration Means?

Yet again, the U.S. space program is in the slough of despond, whereby previous assumptions are questioned, the current path is discarded, the program is re-directed, and luminous enthusiasm heralds the new direction…And then it all tapers off to nothing.As long as we are navel-gazing during this p...
January 25, 2010 | By Paul D. Spudis

Beyond LEO - Flexible Path Revisited

In an interesting post at Vision Restoration, “Ray” tackles the desultory Flexible Path (FP) architecture of the Augustine committee, which calls for human missions to low gravity destinations and delays missions to the lunar and martian surface.  The problems he finds with FP are similar to points...
January 23, 2010 | By Paul D. Spudis

« Previous 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Next »

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In the Magazine

May 2013

  • Beyond the Moon
  • The Man Who Invented the Predator
  • Cancelled: Britain’s High-Mach Heartbreak
  • Earth’s Mirror
  • The Galileo Project

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Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine has been delighting aerospace enthusiasts with the best writing about their favorite subject since April 1986. As an adjunct of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, Air & Space matches the grand scope of the Museum, encompassing every era of aviation and space exploration. With stories that range from the Wright Brothers to the design of NASA's next lunar lander, Air & Space emphasizes the human stories as well as the technology of aviation and spaceflight.

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