Undefeated in battle, the USS Constitution is more than 200 years old and still afloat. Can you emerge victorious in a quiz on this venerable Ship of State?

Source: www.war.gov

Meet Boston’s only undefeated team: the crew aboard Old Ironsides! Step aboard the oldest and toughest warship in all seven seas, which doubles as a living — and floating — museum.

Source: www.war.gov

The department helped make another “Mission: Impossible” possible. Military expertise, feedback and equipment provided authenticity to make the magic of Hollywood feel real.

Source: www.war.gov

Thousands of American service personnel are missing from previous conflicts and the Defense POW/MIA Agency remains relentless in its mission to provide the fullest possible accounting to their families and the nation, until they’re home.

Source: www.war.gov

The triad, along with assigned forces, provide 24/7 deterrence to prevent catastrophic actions from our adversaries and they stand ready, if necessary, to deliver a decisive response, anywhere, anytime.

Source: www.war.gov

Composed of an active-duty and two reserve components, learn about the Air Force’s structure and more key facts.

Source: www.war.gov

NASA’s 737 aircraft was painted this week in Oklahoma as it progresses with modifications for use as a reduced gravity test aircraft for the agency. NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, took ownership of the aircraft from the United States Air Force in June. 

The aircraft will perform lunar-gravity parabolic flights to validate astronaut lunar suits and associated crew systems required to support Artemis mission objectives. These flights will happen at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for reduced-gravity operations, with NASA Armstrong oversight.

In addition, the aircraft will serve as a key asset for systems‑integration research for flight testing autonomy, sensors, and other digital systems.

Source: www.nasa.gov

Many of NASA’s most important aerospace breakthroughs that began in the laboratory were ultimately proven in the sky. For decades, experts at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland conducted flight tests — piloting aircraft into targeted environments such as icing clouds and carefully defined atmospheric routes. This approach allowed them to collect measurements directly in flight, providing critical data that linked laboratory theories to practical performance. 

The center’s flight research dates to the 1940s, when NASA Glenn was known as the Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NASA’s predecessor agency. During World War II, engineers and pilots worked to improve aircraft performance and increase high-altitude reliability. In the mid-to-late-1940s, flight research helped make early jet and ramjet engines practical. Later, Glenn’s flight programs helped improve the efficiency and environmental performance of aircraft engines — primarily conventional jet engines. 

Behind those early flight programs was a pioneering group of pilots who helped establish NASA Glenn’s reputation for airborne research. The center’s first generation of pilots, including Howard Lilly, Joseph Walker, William Swann, and William “Ed” Gough, helped lay the groundwork for more than two dozen other Glenn pilots, including future astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Fred Haise. 

Together with Glenn’s researchers, engineers, and support staff, these pilots established airborne research capabilities that NASA continues to rely on today. Their work demonstrated how flight testing could bridge the gap between laboratory research and real-world performance. 

“These missions transformed aircraft into flying laboratories,” said Mark Russell, a NASA safety officer and pilot who served as the former acting chief of Aircraft Operations at Glenn. “They bridged the gap between ground testing and full-scale flight, proving the measurements needed to connect theory with performance. The testing also helped validate technologies and procedures later used aboard spacecraft and orbital missions.” 

Research workhorses 

From the start, NASA put its aircraft to work on a wide range of research challenges. 

For decades, NASA Glenn aircraft have been used to study in-flight icing hazards, collecting data that has helped make commercial aviation safer. For nearly 40 years, NASA Glenn’s De Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otter served as the center’s workhorse for icing research, gathering data that helped shape modern aviation safety standards. 

Beyond improving aviation safety, Glenn’s flight research also explored new propulsion technologies that could transform the future of flight. Today, researchers are exploring hydrogen as an aviation fuel. But NASA Glenn helped show its potential viability decades ago using its Martin B-57B Canberra aircraft. After developing a hydrogen fuel system for the B-57B, a team tested it safely from February to April 1957. The flights showed the system’s reliable operation and advanced efficiency, marking a major milestone in aviation technology.  

Flight testing also supported technologies destined for use beyond Earth, helping researchers evaluate hardware under conditions that closely resembled space. Beginning in 1963, the center began a program to test and measure how well solar cells worked under conditions similar to those in space. Using specially modified airplanes, including Learjets, NASA conducted flights to help recreate some of the sunlight and atmospheric conditions that solar cells would experience outside Earth’s atmosphere. The program lasted decades, supporting space technology calibration through numerous high-altitude flights and adapting to newer aircraft over time. 

Researchers later applied these airborne capabilities to environmental science, extending their value beyond aviation and space technology. Using the Twin Otter and S-3B Viking over the Great Lakes, researchers tracked harmful algal blooms on Lake Erie by measuring changes in water color and composition. The data improved satellite systems used to monitor water quality and ecosystem health.  

Glenn’s research aircraft also played an important role in preparing technologies and experiments for spaceflight through microgravity testing. NASA Glenn advanced microgravity research through in-flight testing using specially modified aircraft, such as its DC-9, to create short periods of weightlessness during parabolic maneuvers. These flights allowed researchers to study how fluids, combustion, materials, and experimental equipment behaved in near-zero gravity before experiments were conducted in space.  

Recent breakthroughs 

Other significant accomplishments enabled by Glenn’s flight research include supporting the development and testing of sustainable aviation technologies, including research related to more fuel-efficient engines and sustainable aviation fuels, and advancing in-flight instrumentation and measurement techniques used across aeronautics research. 

In 2024, Glenn’s Flight Operations participated in an optical communications study using the center’s Pilatus PC-12 NG aircraft. This mission successfully demonstrated the ability to transmit large volumes of data through a laser communication system across NASA’s legacy infrastructure. The work contributed to NASA’s broader effort to advance optical communications for future missions. NASA further tested optical communications on the Artemis II mission and effectively transmitted substantial amounts of data from the Orion capsule to multiple ground stations over the course of the 10-day journey.  

As NASA’s flight research enterprise evolved, the agency also restructured how it manages its research aircraft. In October 2025, NASA streamlined its aircraft flight operations, relocating its aircraft from Glenn to NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. NASA Glenn continues its important icing and propulsion research and communications technology development in collaboration with Armstrong.  

From its historical roots in wartime engine development to modern work on aircraft safety, Glenn’s airborne research has consistently moved innovative ideas from the laboratory to real-world application. For more than eight decades, NASA Glenn has transformed ideas first proven in the laboratory into innovations validated in the sky — a legacy that continues to shape the future of aviation and space exploration. 

Source: www.nasa.gov

NASA’s next Gateways to Blue Skies competition invites collegiate teams to imagine innovative new ways aircraft could inspect land-based infrastructure, such as bridges and tunnels, to improve safety, reliability, and costs by 2035 or sooner.

Infrastructure is the foundation of the nation’s strong economy, global competitiveness, and daily quality of life. When that infrastructure is damaged or in disrepair, it restricts the movement of people, goods, and critical resources like water and energy. Inspections are important throughout the lifetime of infrastructure projects, but they often come with challenges.

Structures such as tunnels, bridges, highways, railways, and electric grids can be massive in size and difficult to reach. They can require disruptive shutdowns to access, or force workers to navigate extreme heights, confined spaces, and hazardous environments. As infrastructure ages and expands, there are opportunities to use innovative airborne platforms to improve current inspection practices.

“The demands for creative solutions like airborne platforms to improve the infrastructure sector are increasing exponentially,” said Steven Holz, Gateways to Blue Skies competition lead, NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. “The time is ripe for innovative students to transform how we work with our critical infrastructure, and this competition gives talented students the opportunity to do so.”

Sponsored by NASA’s University Innovation Project, the 2027 Gateways to Blue Skies competition encourages multidisciplinary teams of college students to conceptualize innovations in the world of aviation. Each year, the competition selects a new theme based on a complex challenge facing the Nation. It aims to engage as many students as possible from all backgrounds, majors, and collegiate levels.

The competition is open to teams of two to six students and divided into two phases. In Phase 1, teams will submit a proposal and an accompanying two-minute video, which will be judged by NASA and industry experts. Up to eight finalist teams will each receive a $9,000 prize and advance to Phase 2, where they will present their updated work to a panel of NASA and industry experts at a forum in May 2027. Winners will be offered the opportunity to intern with NASA Aeronautics in the academic year following the forum.

Teams interested in participating in the competition can review guidelines and eligibility requirements posted on the competition website. Teams are encouraged to submit a non-binding Notice of Intent by Monday, Oct. 12, via the website to stay apprised of competition news. Proposal and video submissions are due Feb. 22, 2027. The Gateway to Blue Skies Competition is run by the Aeronautics Division in NASA’s Research and Technology Mission Directorate. NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation, part of the Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing Program within the Research and Technology Mission Directorate, manages the challenge contract. The National Institute of Aerospace administers the challenge on behalf of NASA.

Source: www.nasa.gov

NASA has selected four university teams to help the agency transform the future of aviation through projects ranging from high-supersonic propulsion systems to low-noise routes for small aircraft flying through cities.

The agency made awards through its University Leadership Initiative, which offers  student teams the opportunity to contribute to real-world flight research that advances NASA’s goals in aeronautics.

This year’s awardees are pursuing projects that align with NASA strategic objectives, including innovation in commercial high-speed aircraft, the development of new tools that can lead to transformational aviation breakthroughs, safer and more efficient air traffic management, and the integration of new air transportation options into the national airspace.

“With these four new awards, the University Innovation project is leaning in on NASA’s aeronautics mission priorities,” said Andrew Provenza, project manager, NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. “These teams will research new propulsion concepts for supersonic flight, novel engineering methods that can revolutionize aerospace system design and certification, and learning-enabled avionics for new advanced and urban air mobility flight vehicle platforms, which could enhance air traffic control modernization.”

The awards represent the ninth round of NASA University Leadership Initiative funding. 

Totaling about $30 million, NASA’s awards will provide multiyear support for awardee universities to build their teams and conduct research. The initiative provides hands-on experiences for students, developing the U.S. aeronautics research workforce while also producing findings that will help drive aviation forward.

University Leadership Initiative awards go to teams comprised of graduate and undergraduate students and led by faculty members. Recipients form academic partnerships with other universities and community colleges, as well as industry. Experts from NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration, and other organizations provide support and guidance.

The awardees are:

University of Minnesota

Adaptive Supersonic Combined Cycle Engine for Next-generation Transportation

Led by Terrence Meyer, the project will work over four years to develop a fuel-flexible propulsion system that uses a traditional jet turbofan during takeoff and subsonic flight, but would transition to a new type of ramjet engine for supersonic flight. In ramjet mode, the system would cruise at Mach 4, or more than 3,000 mph. The project aims to enable efficient, faster-than-sound flight, including flight at high-supersonic speeds.

Stanford University

Safety Across Lifecycle of Learning-Enabled Avionics Systems: Safety Data Flywheel

Led by Somil Bansal, this four-year project aims to develop an avionics system to control an aircraft’s communications, navigation, and other electronics that incorporates machine learning. The system would take an approach that ensures safety is continuously reinforced throughout its operations. This research could help create a framework for the aviation sector to safely integrate artificial intelligence-enabled avionics into the national airspace.

Stanford University

Noise-Optimal Trajectory Planning for Urban Air Mobility Operations, Including Ambient Noise

Led by Juan Alonso, the center created through this award will work over four years to develop a high-fidelity simulation framework focused on developing low-noise flight paths in urban environments for future small aircraft. Developers are envisioning urban air mobility aircraft as ways to move people and cargo over populated areas. This center would integrate realistic models of how sound travels in cities to enable vehicle flight paths that would reduce community noise exposure from new air traffic.

Virginia Tech

Certification Driven Aircraft Design Under Uncertainty

Led by Darshan Sarojini, this three-year project proposes to transform next-generation aircraft design while integrating powerful new computer modeling tools: model-based systems engineering, multidisciplinary design, analysis and optimization, and high-dimensional uncertainty quantification. The goal is safe, faster, and more efficient modeling that results in fewer costly redesigns later in the aircraft development cycle.

For more than 10 years, NASA’s University Leadership Initiative has fostered bold ideas, collaborative research, and team-led solutions. The initiative is part of NASA’s Research and Technology Mission Directorate.

Source: www.nasa.gov