AirSpaceMag.com

Lockheed Martin’s F-35B Lightning II fighter hit another mark in its test program on March 18: the first vertical landing. Pilot Graham Tomlinson gently descended from a height of 150 feet after hovering for a minute above the runway at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland. Watch for yourself in this Lockheed video:

The real Tuskegee Airmen: Hair required.

Or at least play one? Then keep an eye on the casting calls for George Lucas’s next film, Red Tails, currently shooting in San Francisco.

From a recent announcement:

Beau Bonneau Casting in San Francisco is currently working on a George Lucas Film “Red Tails” starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrance Howard. This is a story about the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African American Combat Squadron in WWII in the 1940′s.

Seeking Non-union African American males for extra work to portray pilots and ground crew. Age Range: 18-35. Height requirement: 5’7″- 6’1″. Waist requirement: 31-34. Must be fit and in shape. Also must have hair on head. Because bald heads were not the trend in the 1940′s, we are not looking for bald heads.

Former World War II POW, Korean War veteran, and Air Force test pilot Bob White died on March 17, St. Patrick’s Day. “The old Irishman went home at 11:55 last night,” his son, Greg, wrote in an e-mail to relatives and friends this morning. Major General White retired from the Air Force in 1981 with a wealth of medals, decorations, trophies, and commendations. Pilot and amateur historian Al Hallonquist spoke with White about his 1962 record-setting X-15 flight, and wrote an “as told to” memoir, which appears in our current issue. Seeing his story in print, says Hallonquist, “meant so much to him.”

Forty-five years ago today, Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov made the first spacewalk during his Voskhod 2 orbital flight.

Leonov recalled in his 2004 book with Dave Scott, Two Sides of the Moon:

When my four-year-old daughter, Vika, saw me take my first steps in space, I later learned, she hid her face in her hands and cried.

“What is he doing? What is he doing?” she wailed. “Please tell Daddy to get back inside.”

Read more about Leonov’s Voskhod 2 flight here.

The Luna 17 lander, with tracks from the roving Lunokhod 1.

Scientists studying photos from the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter have identified the relic Soviet Lunokhod rovers that touched down on the moon in the 1970s. Read the report here.

Planetary scientists at the Vernadsky Institute in Moscow have also been playing with the LRO images. Be sure to click on the amazing Lunokhod panoramas at the bottom of their web page.