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.

Today on AirSpace: the scandal of the century! Matt and Emily are joined by friend of the show and Museum curator Bob van der Linden to learn all the twists and turns of the Air Mail Crisis of 1934.

The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum is celebrating 50 years since the building in Washington, D.C., opened to the public and will commemorate this milestone throughout 2026. The museum ...

As visitors enter the National Air and Space Museum’s recently reopened Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall, an incredible collection of hanging artifacts draws their gaze upward. Throughout the hall, a ...

How chaff was invented in World War II. In the summer of 2004, I met one of the great astronomers of the 20th century at his Boston home. I was there to help him clean out his front hall closet. Let ...

With all available military planes and pilots needed on the front lines of World War II, the U.S. needed to get creative to protect merchant vessels and war ships from threats lurking in the water.

In 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt broadcast a new goal in one of his famous Fireside Chats: he wanted to see 50,000 planes a year built in the United States. Up until that point, the U.S.

After decades of service, a legendary tanker says farewell. I’m seated in the tail of a U.S. Air Force KC-10 that is climbing to 25,000 feet somewhere over Big Sur. Looking out from the boom ...

The North American X-15 is a true marvel of aviation history –a pioneering hypersonic research aircraft that pushed the boundaries of aeronautical engineering in the 1960s. This rocket-powered plane ...

Just months following the passing of Richard Truly, pilot of Space Shuttle Columbia on STS-2, the world has lost that mission’s commander. Astronaut, test pilot, aeronautical engineer, and the first ...

When NASA astronaut Ellison Onizuka rode Space Shuttle Discovery into space on shuttle mission STS-51-C in 1985, he made history on several counts. He was the first Asian American astronaut, the first ...

It’s 1961. You’re a 24-year-old pilot. You’re also one of 25 women invited to undergo the rigorous testing that the Mercury 7 astronauts went through. You're one of the 13 women that pass, greatly ...