Tony Reichhardt

Tony Reichhardt is a senior editor at Air & Space.

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So Long, Spirit

Last night NASA made one last attempt to contact the Spirit Mars rover, which got stuck in the sand two years ago and hadn’t been heard from since March 22

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Shuttle Notes: A Papal Visit, and a Photo-Op

In this time of endings for the space shuttle, there are still a few firsts left

Scenes From the Shuttle: Greetings!

Just one space shuttle flight left to go.

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The Turtle Flies!

Gamera, you'll recall from Japanese horror movies, was a giant, fire-breathing, flying turtle that used to terrorize Tokyo (and battle Godzilla) back in the 1960s.So what else would students at the University of Maryland—whose mascot is a terrapin—name their flying contraption, which yesterday appe...

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Enter the Firebird

Northrop Grumman has entered a new vehicle in the red-hot field of military reconnaissance with its Firebird UAV, built by Scaled Composites. And this one can fly with or without a pilot.According to the company's press release, the Firebird is a versatile spy plane: it can return high-definition v...

Shepard’s Shot

The first American spaceflight was a triumph—for an astronaut and for a nation.

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So You Want to Live on Mars? Really?

A one-way trip would test our dedication to the idea of settling the Red Planet.

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Kinect to the Universe

I became fascinated by the Xbox 360 Kinect system long before it hit the stores—back when Microsoft was still developing it under the name Project Natal. The commercial product hasn't yet delivered on the full promise of this demo, but I expect that it will, and fairly soon. Kinect is already the f...

Some got flown shuttles, some got mockups like this one at the Johnson Space Center. Will the crowds gather either way?

Shuttle Shuffle

Winners and losers in the game of “who gets the orbiters”

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Yuri’s Day

Recommended readings on the 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight.

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A Handshake (and a Movie) Before You Go

The Soyuz TMA-21 crew is scheduled to blast off for the International Space Station this evening, with NASA astronaut Ron Garan and two rookie cosmonauts

The Royal Air Force's Brize Norton base tests out virtual parachuting

Parachuting in Virtual Reality

An addendum to the British Air Force's regular jump routine

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Robo-Gull

Wow. Aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal would have loved this. German automation company Festo has built a "SmartBird" modeled on the herring gull that, according to the company, can take off, fly, and land autonomously—just by flapping its wings.The design features a number of innovations, including...

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The Human Touch

One thing I've always liked about the Russian space program is that it keeps the "human" in human spaceflight. NASA often seems more interested in technology than people. You can see it in the different feel of the  international space station modules: the American, European and Japanese labs are f...

Space shuttle Discovery lifted-off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for its 39th and final mission.

Discovery's Last... and First...Flight

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Lunney’s Legacy

These are emotional days for the folks who work on the space shuttle, as they watch vehicles and people retire. Today was the last day on the job for Bryan Lunney, a 22-year veteran NASA flight director who also happens to be the son of legendary flight director Glynn Lunney.Here's how Bryan summed...

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Spacewalker in a Telescope

Amazing what you can see in a 10-inch telescope if the conditions are right.  Dutch amateur astronomer Ralf Vandebergh got a picture of STS-133 astronaut Steve Bowen spacewalking outside the International Space Station last week.

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Bad Day at Vandenberg

Ron Grabe, launch system manager for Orbital Sciences, didn't try to sugar-coat the news. "Tonight we're all pretty devastated," he said during a predawn press briefing at Vandenberg AFB today.Orbital's Taurus XL rocket had just dumped NASA's $424 million Glory climate satellite into the Pacific oc...

Alvin Drew with his container for holding "space."

A Bottle of Nothing

A Japanese installation artist asks astronauts to bring back a little bit of space.

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The First Countdown?

Most histories of space travel credit the first use of the rocket countdown to a work of fiction: Fritz Lang's 1929 science fiction film, "Frau im Mond" (Woman in the Moon).http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaVLaD4vfBcMaybe not, though. British science fiction writer George Griffith used the same dram...

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