Smithsonian

Picture a hairless, wrinkly rodent about the size of a small sweet potato — kinda cool, kinda weird. They also are extraordinarily long-lived. Researchers are lining up to study their secrets.

Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 spacesuit is about to go back on public display after a Smithsonian effort to preserve it. The effort wasn't to make it pristine. Lunar dust still covers the boots.

The founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture will become the Smithsonian Institution's first African American secretary.

It was the biggest extinction in Earth's history. A new Smithsonian exhibit notes that some of the same things that killed over 90% of ocean species 250 million years ago are happening now.

A team of scientists and veterinarians at the National Zoo artificially inseminated Mei Xiang on Thursday evening. Giant Pandas are only able to get pregnant for 24 to 72 hours each year.

The celebration will take place on June 29 and 30, while the original 10 days of events will be postponed to next year, in part as a result of the partial government shutdown.

The government partially shut down, President Trump and the first lady made a secret visit to Iraq, and the stock market plunged and rebounded — all in just over a week.

"There's no getting around it," Linda St. Thomas, chief spokeswoman for the Smithsonian. About two-thirds of the institution's staff are federal employees and will be furloughed effective Jan. 2.

This long-legged canid is in trouble. Its habitat in the Brazilian Savannah is being destroyed. So Smithsonian scientists are racing to breed a healthy backup population.

Ellen Stofan says she hopes to inspire the next generation with more stories about the women and people of color who have been involved in the aviation and space business since the beginning.

A long-lost trove of preserved animal specimens recently turned up at a university in Georgia. Those old squirrels and muskrats could hold the answers to questions we haven't even thought to ask yet.