As we wait for season TEN (!!!) we're looking back on this season six favorite Every day, satellites orbit Earth taking pictures. These images are used for everything from intelligence to weather prediction and even today’s topic – archaeology. When you hear the term “space archaeology” you might envision a khaki-clad astronaut excavating the Moon. But these space archaeologists are actually Earth-bound researchers who use satellite and other aerial imagery to assist in archaeological...

Have you ever wondered how astronauts on the ISS or elsewhere in space vote? It turns out there's a whole Texas law about it. We'll tell you exactly how to cast a ballot from 250 miles up in orbit on AirSpace. Thanks to our guest in this episode: Katherine Schaur - NASA Near Space Network Find the transcript here. Sign up here for the monthly AirSpace newsletter

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore! There are so many things that fly in Oz, from broomsticks to monkeys to bubbles. With the Wicked movie coming out this November, we thought we'd look back on all things flight in the land of Oz and tell you all about how those effects were made for the screen and the stage.  Thanks to our guest in this episode: Ryan Lintelman - Entertainment Curator, Smithsonian National Museum of American History Find the transcript here. Sign up here for the monthly...

During WWII one plane survived more missions than any other in Europe. Named 'Flak-Bait,' this medium bomber was saved from the scrap heap after the war and immediately donated to the Smithsonian. However, public display and outdated restoration techniques have taken a toll on the plane. We're taking you inside our restoration hanger to learn all about how the Museum's conservators are reversing damage and conserving Flak-Bait so visitors can learn about her contributions for many years to...

What if there are intelligent lifeforms elsewhere in the universe? And what if all we need to do to find them is to listen to the right radio frequency at the right time? That's what the scientists of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) have been working on for decades. And that research got the Hollywood Glow-Up back in 1997 with Contact, starring Jodie Foster as SETI researcher Dr. Ellie Arroway. Because if we were alone in the Universe, wouldn't that be such a waste of...

It's a bird? It's a plane? Its a guy pretending to be a bird?? We have a very odd aircraft in the collection. It's an ultralight. Small, highly maneuverable and based off the wings hang gliders use to jump off mountains, this particular ultralight was used to help birds migrate. And it starred in the movie in the '90s! When we heard that we were like, say more please.  Thanks to our guest in this episode: Russ Lee - curator and chair of the Aeronautic Department, National Air and Space...

Back in the 'Golden Age' of air travel in the 50s, 60s and 70s going on a trip in an airplane was an event. On those flights you would often get a little souvenir of your air travel; a deck of cards, a little toy, a trading card, captain's wings and a hat for your little tyke. It was a way for you to show off to your friends and for the airline to keep themselves top of mind for your next airline purchase. Like a lot of things from the era, deregulation came along in 1978 and completely...

Over six missions, the Apollo astronauts collected and brought back 842 pounds of Lunar samples. Most of those Moon rocks were put aside for science, but some were earmarked for things like touch rocks (like we have at NASM) or educational disks (which you might have seen if you had a particularly cool science teacher growing up) and to countries and states as diplomatic gifts. But who decides what rocks go where? And how in the heck did the National Cathedral get a rock to put in a stained...

Our conversation with Jack Black and his brother Neil Siegal about their Mother, Judith Love Cohen was too good just to give you just the taste from the end of our Star Search episode. Here's the extended producers cut with everything from Jack's birth story, to being an engineer in the 70s, to Judy's 2nd career as a book publisher.Thanks to Jack Black and Neil Siegal for sharing their memories about their Mom.Find the transcript hereSign up here for the monthly AirSpace newsletter

There are a lot of air and space celebrities; pilots, astronauts, engineers, etc etc. But there's another category of celebrities that are famous for other things but also have surprising ties to air or space. Today we're talking about three of those; a famous tv chef who also helped create a shark repellant for aviators and spacecraft, an actor from Hollywood's golden years who invented the basis for wifi, and an aerospace engineer who worked on Apollo and more--and also has a pretty famous...

When the Chandra X-Ray Observatory launched 25 years ago, it showed us our universe in a whole new light (literally). From the remnants of exploded stars to Jupiter's auroras, Chandra has shown us so many beautiful and scientifically important sights. Even after a quarter decade this unique telescope is still giving us new data about black holes and whirling neutron stars and all the things out in space that give off x-rays. Thanks to our guest in this episode: Dr. Daniel Castro - Harvard...

The city of Roswell, New Mexico is kind of in the middle of nowhere. Out in the dessert west of Texas, this small oasis in the dessert was first home to indigenous peoples, then cowboys, ranching and farming and then the military before becoming the crash site of a possible UFO in 1947. That story took on a life of it's own and by the time the Army came out with an official explaination in 1997, the myths had stuck. Today, Roswell is still a farming and ranching community but 'the incident'...

Sci-fi is full of giant ships full of humanity living and dying and reaching out to new places far far away. Usually, these are called generations ships. And they rely on well, generations. But today in science-fact there's so much more about reproducing in space that we don't know than the small amount that we do. And as we get closer to commercial space travel that might include honeymooning on the moon, we kind of need to figure out what's going to happen with pregnancies that are a little...

Georgia "Tiny" Broadwick was 15 years old when she first jumped out of a hot air balloon with a parachute in 1908. Over the next 14 years she would make over 1,000 jumps, first out of balloons and then as the first woman to jump from an airplane. Her talent and skill was sought after by the Army in WWI when they first started training their balloon and airplane pilots to use parachutes as a safety device. Tiny even accidentally invented the ripcord that's a staple in parachute design today....

In the 1930s, rocketry was basically a joke among the scientific establishment in the U, but that didn't stop a rag tag group out of Pasadena from trying to build rockets. That group would first be known as The Suicide Squad (for all the dangerous experiments they conducted on campus) and later as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Over its first decade, the JPL story includes funding challenges, communist intrigue, brushes with the occult, building weapons, building engines and...

AirSpace will be back in two weeks with brand new epsiodes. In the meantime, enjoy this episode from our friends at the podcast, This is Love. When twin rovers named Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars twenty years ago, they were only supposed to last 90 Martian days. But years passed, they were still alive, and engineers kept taking care of them. “I remember telling myself, ‘Please don’t die, Opportunity. Please don’t die.’” Find more information about this episode here. AirSpace is...

While we get Season Nine ready for you, we turned to our friends at Sidedoor to bring you a story of running and running and running and running…in Space! We’ll let them take it from here: Until the 1970s, women were barred from competing in U.S. marathons because of the belief that the "violent movements" of running would wreak havoc on their reproductive system, "thus defeating a woman’s true purpose in life, i.e., the bringing forth of strong children." Through a series of steps,...

You’ll have new AirSpace episodes soon, but since they may have found Amelia Earhart’s plane(!!!) we thought we’d revisit our episode on her and Eleanor Roosevelt’s somewhat unlikely friendship. On a spring evening in 1933, Amelia Earhart took first lady Eleanor Roosevelt on a joyride. Imagine two women—dressed for dinner at the White House (white gloves and all)—stealing away from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave to pilot and co-pilot a nighttime flight to Baltimore. On this episode of AirSpace, we’re...

As we look forward to the upcoming total solar eclipse over North America, AirSpace is looking back in time to a much much older eclipse. In 1142 a total solar eclipse with much the same path as the one coming up April 8. It was also the sign in the sky the Seneca needed to join the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, a representative democracy that would govern six tribes below Lakes Erie and Ontario. Before a 1997 journal article, Western Historians insisted the eclipse that decided the Seneca...

Did you know that it takes the Earth 365-ish days to orbit the sun? It’s that ‘ish’ that makes February 29 a thing every four years. We talk to one of the Museum’s astronomy educators to get the low down on Leap Day. Thanks to Astronomy Educator Shauna Brandt Edson for joining Emily for this episode. Sign up here for the monthly AirSpace newsletter AirSpace is made possible by the generous support of Olay.

Afrofuturism is a cultural movement that explores the possibilities of Black futures and pasts and presents through art, literature, music, film and pop culture. And a lot of Afrofuturism has a lot of space in it. Today we're talking about Afrofuturist space and Afronauts and walking through the Afrofuturism exhibit by our friends at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Thanks to our guests in this episode: Dr. Kevin Strait, Curator National Museum of African...

Hollywood is in love with airports and airplanes and we are too! How many rom-coms can you name where the meet cute, the almost meet, the epic chase or the long distance relationships happens thanks to a terminal or twist of fate seat assignment? We can name at least six. And if we missed your favorite, drop us a comment on Instagram or Twitter! Thanks to our guest in this episode: Scott Meslow, Author From Hollywood with Love: The Rise and Fall and Rise Again of the Romantic Comedy Sign...

From when it started in 1981, MTV used an iconic neon scribbled astronaut as its channel ID for years. And even today the award you get when you win a VMA is a statuette of an Apollo era astronaut, but why is MTV obsessed with the Moonman? And why do we have two of those statuettes in our collection? We're digging into the history of cable's giant leap, today on AirSpace Thanks to our guest in this episode: Dr. Margaret Weitekamp, National Air and Space Museum Space History Chair Sign up...

Hurricanes are a fact of life in the Caribbean but in 2017, the season was so bad that it changed everything for the people of Puerto Rico. Only two weeks after another major hurricane, Maria barreled into the island bringing more than 200 mile per hour winds, rain and flooding. In the aftermath, the Coast Guard with their helicopters are crucial to search and rescue, aid drops and surveying damage. We spoke to two Coast Guard members, as well as one of our own colleagues, about what the...