Local pilot and inventor Marvin Joy stands next to his experimental wingless plane that he called the “pumpkin seed.” The plane was flown twice at Pearson Field, in perhaps the first test of a lifting ...

On Nov. 25, 1970, an experimental aircraft called the Northrop M2-F3 made its first powered flight. The M2-F3 was a heavyweight lifting body. A lifting body is an airplane that produces most of the ...

On Aug. 16, 1963, NASA's M2-F1 aircraft prototype made its first glide flight. This wingless aircraft kind of looked like a flying bathtub. NASA made it to test a new concept called the lifting body, ...

The average non-stop flight from New York City to London on a passenger airline takes roughly seven hours, depending on the plane. Designers of a new aircraft, the Sky OV Evo, are taking the wingless ...

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 6:05 p.m. Thursday to provide additional details, including that it was a malfunction and not the wind that led to the injury. A mechanic was injured after a ...