General Electric designed this proof-of-concept turboprop “unducted fan” engine as part of NASA’s Advanced Turboprop Project, which was aimed at overcoming the three-fold increase in fuel prices ...

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 ...

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.

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 ...

For many years, the story of the Tuskegee Airmen—a group of African American airmen who flew combat missions in racially segregated units in World War II—was not well known to the American public.

Have you ever hung upside down for a little while? Remember how it felt to have all the blood rush to your head? When astronauts get to space, they experience a very similar sensation. Astronauts have ...

This exhibit is now closed. In this display, Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit from the historic Apollo 11 Moon landing was back on the Museum floor for the first time in 13 years. The spacesuit underwent an ...

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 ...

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 May 20, 1932, Amelia Earhart set out in her Lockheed Vega to become the first woman to fly nonstop and alone over the Atlantic Ocean. Departing from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, and landing in ...

The idea that characters can fly from planet to planet, or star to star, defying current science and technology, is central to science fiction. Although some of these ideas predated the space age, ...

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 ...