Throughout their history, posters have been a significant means of mass communication, often with striking visual effect. Wendy Wick Reaves, the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery Curator of Prints and ...

1. Continuous, Supersonic Afterburner. Ever wonder what causes the diamond pattern in the SR-71 jet engine exhaust? It's due to the extra thrust provided by the afterburner which is actually ...

Visit us in Washington, DC and Chantilly, VA to explore hundreds of the world’s most significant objects in aviation and space history. Free timed-entry passes are required for the Museum in DC.

The Tuskegee Airmen have become popular symbols of increasing diversity and representation in the U.S. armed forces, but the extent to which they had to fight to establish themselves, risking their ...

In this 2011 Ask an Expert talk, Dr. Roger Launius explores the 1947 Roswell Incident, an event that entangled the United States Army in UFO conspiracy theories that persist to this day. To understand ...

How did Mary Golda Ross of Park Hill, Oklahoma, become an engineer working on some of the most important—and top-secret—aerospace technologies of the Cold War? In her words, she “started with a firm ...

Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise were meant to be the third Apollo crew to journey to the Moon on a lunar landing mission. On April 11, 1970, the Apollo 13 astronauts launched from Kennedy ...

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 ...

On June 15, 1921, Bessie Coleman received the first pilot’s license issued to an African American woman and to a Native American woman. The license was issued by the Fédération Aéronautique ...

One of the most iconic images of the D-Day invasion was taken shortly after the initial invasion itself. The image features several LSTs (Landing Ship, Tank) beached along the coast of France while ...

Visit us in Washington, DC and Chantilly, VA to explore hundreds of the world’s most significant objects in aviation and space history. Free timed-entry passes are required for the Museum in DC.

On June 5, 1966—fifty-five years ago—Eugene Cernan became the third person to walk in space. His spacewalk took place a year and two days after fellow astronaut Ed White had gone outside the ...