The Space Race grew out of a conflict known as the Cold War. While not a war in the traditional sense, the two countries were in a state of military and political tension that lasted nearly 50 years ...

The Wright brothers—you may have heard of them. But who exactly were they and what did they do? The invention of the airplane by Wilbur and Orville Wright is one of the great stories in American ...

General aviation encompasses all civil aviation operations other than scheduled air services and non-scheduled air transport operations for remuneration or hire.

In 1941, a new air base at Tuskegee, Alabama, became the center for the training program of Black air personnel. First with the 99th Fighter Squadron and later with the 332nd Fighter Group, African ...

Crop-dusting was an often hazardous occupation, until a maverick entrepreneur and pilot designed the right airplanes for the job.

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 July 20, 1969, humans walked on the Moon for the first time.We look back at the legacy of our first small steps on the Moon and look forward to the next giant leap.

This successful effort did not go unnoticed by certain American and Japanese naval observers who began to visualize experimenting with specialized “airplane carrier” ships that could both launch and ...

Learn more about the evolution of the commercial flying experience in the United States using objects from the Museum's collection.

In 1977, Star Wars: A New Hope, the first installment on George Lucas’s famous Star Wars film series, became one of the biggest box office hits of all time. It also gave rise to an innovative ...

This collection consists of x-ray film radiographs made in 2008 by conservator Roland H. "Ron" Cunningham, of the Museum Conservation Institute (MCI), Smithsonian Institution, of 17 artifacts in the ...

After the competitive short-term goals of human spaceflight had been met in the 1960s, many advocates of space exploration envisioned a permanent human presence in space.