AirSpace

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...

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, t...

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...

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...

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, comm...

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, O...

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 pu...

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 Pennsylvan...

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. Bef...

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...

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. Tha...

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,...

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 thi...

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 damag...

In January 1942 a B-314 flying boat operated by Pan American World Airways landed in New York after making arguably the first around the world flight by a commercial airliner. But when they set out from San Francisco in 1941, they never intended to hold that record. Trapped in the Pacific by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Captain Bob Ford and his crew were forced to return home flying west....

In a lot of political and financial circles space exploration is often talked about in terms of human space exploration VERSUS robotic space travel. But most scientists and engineers who work on space missions think this question is better answered with a yes, and. We're diving into the pros, cons and uses of both human and robotic space exploration today on AirSpace. We’re joined by Dr Erica Jawi...

Today is a very special day, parade day of course! The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade has been a holiday staple for almost 100 years, and the balloons have been a part of it for nearly as long. We got the download on these helium-filled works of art that aren't all that different from the hot-air cousins. Thanks to our guest on this episode: Kathleen Wright, Director of Production Operation at Mac...

Space is dangerous. And as long as we've been sending people into space, we've also been thinking about what we can do to make sure they're prepared for it, and make sure they will come home again. The main way that manifests is in training astronauts before they go up, and contingency planning on how to rescue them if something goes awry. We’re joined by Dr. Emily A. Margolis , Curator of Contemp...

When the Boeing 747 first came out it revolutionized the already revolutionary Jet Age. Able to carry more than twice as many passengers as it's predecessors, the 747 was initally designed for cargo. Boeing thought it would be quickly outstripped by the U.S.'s SST. But when the 'American Concorde' was scrapped in favor of breathable air and no sonic booms over major cities (see our episode Boom, C...

Europa Clipper is soon to be on its was to the outer solar system to study one of Jupiter's most interesting moons. In addition to the really awesome science it will do ('sniffing' gases with a mass spectrometer to find out what they're made of?!? How cool is that??), the spacecraft will carry a "message in a bottle" etched with your names and a poem by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón. Icy moons, sci...

AirSpace is looking up! (We know, we know, we're usually looking up what with the air and the space-ness of our podcast) But today we're exploring how we hang really big, priceless artifacts from the ceiling in the museum. We asked two friends whose jobs are to do just that to talk to us about just what it takes to put airliners, spacecraft, X-wings and more up on the ceiling. Thanks to our guests...

We’re extending our Hot Barbie Summer by looking back on this gem from season seven. When Barbie first became an astronaut in 1965, she was more than a decade ahead of NASA sending a woman to space. Since then, there have been several versions of astronaut Barbie — from a spangly 80s doll to one who had a jumpsuit just like the one they give you at Space Camp. Today, astronaut Barbie actually went...

Desde que llegó a los cines en 1977, la Guerra de las galaxias ha sido adoptada y adaptada por muchos grupos. En los últimos años, una explosión de películas, series y libros de la Guerra de las galaxias ha aportado más diversidad que nunca al universo. En estos lanzamientos recientes, los actores y las historias latinas han tomado protagonismo. En este episodio de AeroEspacial , nos adentramos en...

From the moment it hit theaters in 1977, Star Wars has been adopted and adapted by many groups. In the past several years an explosion of Star Wars movies, shows, and books have brought more diversity into the universe than ever before. In these recent releases, Latino actors and storylines have taken center stage. We're jumping in to the past and present of Latino representation in the Star Wars...

Artists frequently use their mediums to tell stories, send messages, or imagine futures unlike our present. For Latino Futurist artists, drawing on the past is key to creating futures that connect heritage, experience, and indigeneity to the present and future in constantly circling time. In a society that imagines the past as ancient history, these artists are challenging what and who art is for....