July's successful circumnavigation of the globe by Solar Impulse was a triumph for human endurance and ingenuity, and proved solar power's efficacy as a reliable source of electricity. But the project would not have been possible without batteries... and the journey proved a voyage of discovery for storage’s technical possibilities.

At a breakfast with defense reporters this week, US Marine Corps Lt. General Robert Walsh, the commanding general of the Corps' Combat Development Command, said that directed energy weapons are "where we want to go." That includes eventually mounting lasers on the F-35B fighter—and virtually everything else in the Marine Corps' inventory.

Everyone loves a message in the clouds, but very few people can make them like they used to.

When 18-year-old Lachlan Smart touched down in eastern Australia on Saturday morning, he became youngest person to fly around the world solo in a single engine aircraft.

They're like the tires on your car—but way stronger.

The world's largest aircraft, a helium-filled, blimp-like airship, has taken to the skies for the first time, successfully landing after its maiden voyage from Cardington Sheds in Bedfordshire, England, today (Aug. 17). The company that designed and manufactured the Airlander 10 airship, Hybrid Air Vehicles, was bursting with excitement on their Twitter page. "Airlander takes off on historic first flight. #airlandet #firsts #flight," Hybrid Air Vehicles tweeted today. "How brilliant is this? Testament to a GREAT British innovation and an amazing small company," read another of their tweets.

The giant blimp-like Airlander 10 has completed its maiden flight after months of preparations. The aircraft's odd shape has led some observers to describe it as a "flying bum."

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is a film about an apocalypse, a millennium after an earlier apocalypse. The 1984 anime, by now-legendary director Hayao Miyazaki, is a sort of gunpowder fantasy, with strange bio-engineered toxic monsters cohabitating a world with windmill farms and sword-armed guardians. The most iconic machine from the film is the jet-powered glider flown by the protagonist Nausicaä. Could such a fanciful flyer ever actually work?

An aircraft powered by solar energy landed in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates early Tuesday, after flying around the world without the use of fossil fuels.

The FBI recovered the data from a hard drive, but Malaysian authorities have not made the finding public. By Jeff Wise. (July 22, 2016 )

The official search is nearly over while amateurs comb beaches to look for more debris. Already their efforts have turned up pieces of wing that show the plane didn't nosedive into the ocean. Officials from Malaysia, Australia, and China have come as close as they could to saying that the greatest mystery in modern aviation, the disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370, will remain unsolved. Meeting in Kuala Lumpur they said, “In the absence of new evidence [the three countries] have collectively decided to suspend the search upon completion of the 120,000 square kilometer (46,332 square mile) search area.”

A supersonic airliner that flies at three times the speed of sound – and runs on nuclear fusion. Stephen Dowling investigates the challenges of making airliners run on atomic power.

The cloud resulted from a series of flares released by an air force jet over the Atlantic Ocean in May. The jet that released the flares, a C-17 Globemaster III, is seen on the right. The flares release smoke and the resulting pattern is sometimes known as a smoke angel. The circular eyes of the above smoke angel are caused by air spiraling off the plane's wings and are known as wingtip vortices.

German researchers have recreated the glider flown by aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal. By Alex Davies.

Demonstrating one of the problems with paper documentation, the Wright Brothers patent on the airplane was recently rediscovered--after 36 years.

Bradley Friesen is a helicopter pilot based in Vancouver, Canada. His YouTube channel and Instagram feed are full of delightful images from the air, with this wonderful pup as his co-pilot. Who's a good doggie?

The U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II AKA “Warthog” has become one of the most-recognized and beloved warplanes since it started flying in the 1970s. We’ve been hearing about its impending retirement—and the reason many in the armed services community are against that—for ages, but proposed legislation could keep it in the sky for at least a little longer.

Airlander 10, the world's largest and longest aircraft, is preparing to gently glide out of its gargantuan shed—which is incidentally the largest hangar in the UK—at Cardington Airfield in Bedfordshire. Earlier this month, Airlander 10, which is being built by Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), was officially named Martha Gwyn by the duke of Kent. HAV is now in the "final stages of testing" before it can exit the hangar, which will be a "matter of weeks" rather than months.

Sen. John McCain slammed the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter's troubled history Tuesday, saying it "has been both a scandal and a tragedy with respect to cost, schedule and performance." The development of the Joint Strike Fighter, a fifth-generation stealth jet, has been beset by spiraling costs and schedule delays. The program's price tag is nearly $400 billion for 2,457 planes -- almost twice the initial estimate.