The Space Race grew out of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the most powerful countries after World War II. For a half-century, the two superpowers competed for supremacy ...

The RTX Living in the Space Age Hall will provide insight into space technologies and infrastructure that are largely invisible to the public but have a profound impact on our daily lives. The ...

U.S. Navy test pilot Alan Shepard joined the astronaut program in 1959. He became the first American and the second man in space on May 5, 1961, when he piloted the Mercury spacecraft Freedom 7 on a ...

Edinburgh Airport, Scotland, United Kingdom (EDI/EGPH) Originally a military airport, Edinburgh Airport opened to commercial aviation in 1977. It is now Scotland's second largest airport after Glasgow ...

The Big Three As the civil airplane progressed from experimental designs to practical transportation, three U.S. aircraft companies formed the backbone of general aviation aircraft: Beechcraft, Cessna ...

In the 1960s during the race to the Moon, the Soviets began to build hardware that in the 1970s became the world's first space station. On April 19, 1971, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first ...

After collecting reference material from the Smithsonian and other sources, the Wright brothers began studying their predecessors. They were surprised to learn that, despite humanity’s centuries-old ...

Command Module Handbag Telling the story of the the Apollo 11 lunar landing includes some of the unique pieces of memorabilia created to mark that human achievement. In addition to the pins, patches, ...

A short history of early 20th-century drones.The invention that had inspired such glowing reviews was a four-foot-long model of a torpedo boat unveiled by Nikola Tesla—considered by some to be the ...

Space food prepared during the Mercury program of the early 1960s was based on the same research done to develop Army survival rations. Much of it was rather tasteless foods mashed up and packed into ...

Chawla flew on two Space Shuttle missions as a mission specialist. On November 19, 1997, she launched on board Space Shuttle Columbia as part of STS-87. Chawla specialized in operating the robotic arm ...

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 ...