The 1909 Wright Military Flyer is the world's first military airplane. In 1908, the U.S. Army Signal Corps sought competitive bids for a two-seat observation aircraft. Winning designs had to meet a ...

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. The ...

See the Bell X-1, the first aircraft to break the sound barrier, in the same Hall as Friendship 7, NASA astronaut John Glenn’s spacecraft in which he became the first American to orbit the Earth. The ...

Tumansky developed increasingly powerful versions of this engine. The 60,800 N (13,668 lb) thrust R-11 F2S-300 final production model was also manufactured under license by both India and China. Some ...

The National Air Museum initiated acquisition of the aircraft from the University of Detroit in the late 1940s and found that the entire fuselage, wing center section, and landing gear were missing.

In response to an Air Force request in 1952 for a 373 - 522 kW (500- to 700-hp) turboprop engine, Lycoming produced two designs, both of which could be converted to turboshafts to power helicopters by ...

Early aerial cameras were sometimes mounted rigidly on the outside of an airplane to obtain vertical views. Aircraft vibration, however, proved a serious problem. In the 1920s, Sherman Fairchild ...

1986 was supposed to be a banner year for the United States in space—12 shuttle missions scheduled, the most to date, including launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. The first five years of shuttle ...

Pancho Barnes was an air racer, stunt pilot, entrepreneur, and even party instigator—a woman who knew no bounds.

This month, gas giants Jupiter and Saturn are coming together in the sky for a once-in-a-lifetime event called a great conjunction. It will peak on December 21, 2020.

The Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) were a huge part of civilian aviation during WWII. Ahead of our new limited series, Home Front, we've brought back our season four episode where we ...

On December 17, 1950, the first known aerial combat between swept-wing jet fighters took place in the skies over Korea. The Russian-built Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 had been introduced to the Korean ...