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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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.

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 ...

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 ...

Katharine Wright played an important role in the early United States aviation industry. The younger sister of Wilbur and Orville Wright, inventors of the first heavier-than-air powered aircraft, she ...

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 ...

If you are traveling somewhere new, you are more than likely going to need some form of map to get there. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy gave the United States a mandate: Before the decade was out ...