SEEKING: full time aviators slash weather enthusiasts for unique opportunity. SCHEDULE: hurricane season. WORK SITE: Lakeland, FL; Biloxi, MS; and the eye of a hurricane. Members of the Air Force and NOAA Corps spend months each year flying back and forth through hurricanes collecting information vital to weather prediction. On the Season 11 premiere of AirSpace, we talk to three of them and get the download on what it takes to do that job.

Thanks to our guests in this episode:

• Lieutenant Colonel Mark Withee, Air Force 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron
• Commander Kevin Doremus, NOAA Corps
• Lieutenant Thomas Smith, NOAA Corps

The transcript for this episode is at s.si.edu/airspaces11e1.

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AirSpace is made possible with the generous support of Lockheed Martin.

AirSpace will be back with Season 11 very soon. In the meantime we thought y'all would enjoy this episode from the Smithsonian Magazine's podcast, There's More to That: Why Auroras Are Suddenly Everywhere All at Once.

For millennia, auroras have both enchanted and haunted human beings. Ancient lore is filled with myths attempting to explain what caused the celestial phenomenon. More recent historic documentation of auroras may even help us predict damaging solar storms in the future.

As we head into a year expected to bring the best northern lights in two decades, we consider the science behind auroras and why they are suddenly so plentiful—even in places that hardly qualify as northern.

In this episode, Jo Marchant, author of The Human Cosmos, and Smithsonian science editor Carlyn Kranking revel in auroras through the ages and explain how to view these dazzling displays yourself.

The Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) are relatively well-known in the U.S. today (to hear more about their story, see our previous episode), but they weren't the only women who flew planes in World War II. A small group of Americans joined pilots from 25 other countries in England's Air Transport Auxiliary, where they ferried hundreds of thousands of planes across the British Isles. Among the pilots were women from all countries and men too old or otherwise unfit for active duty (including a WWI Ace with only one eye and arm). They braved poor weather, mechanically iffy planes, regular bombings, and dangerous conditions to keep the Allies in the air.

Thanks to our guests in this episode

• Becky Aikman, Author of Spitfires: The American Women who Flew in the Face of Danger During WWII
• Richard Poad, organizer, Air Transport Auxiliary Museum at the Maidenhead Heritage Centre

Oral histories in the episode came from the NASA Oral History Project and the TWU Libraries Women's Collection at Texas Women's University.

The transcript for this episode is at s.si.edu/homefront4

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AirSpace is made possible by generous support from Lockheed Martin