Short answers, pulled from the story.
An aircraft is a vehicle that can fly by gaining support from the air. It counters gravity using static lift, the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or, in a few cases, direct downward thrust from its engines. U.S. federal regulations define it as a device used or intended to be used for flight in the air.
Lighter-than-air aircraft, called aerostats, use buoyancy from a lifting gas such as helium, hydrogen, or hot air that is less dense than the surrounding air. Heavier-than-air aircraft, called aerodynes, are denser than air and must produce aerodynamic lift over an aerofoil or powered lift from downward engine thrust.
Wilbur and Orville Wright invented the first powered airplane, flying it in 1903 after their research into wing design and aircraft control. George Cayley built the first glider capable of carrying a human and was also the first to identify the four major aerodynamic forces.
The NASA X-43A Pegasus, a scramjet-powered hypersonic lifting body, set the record for fastest air-breathing powered flight at Mach 9.68 on the 16th of November 2004. The Space Shuttle is the fastest fixed-wing aircraft and fastest glider, re-entering the atmosphere at nearly Mach 25.
The Antonov An-225 Mriya was the largest aircraft by weight and the largest regular fixed-wing aircraft ever built, a Soviet-built six-engine transport 84 m long with an 88 m wingspan. It held the world payload record after transporting 428,834 lbs and was destroyed during the Russo-Ukrainian War.
In 2018, global commercial aviation operations generated 2.4% of emissions, averaging 88 grams per revenue passenger per km. By 2020, aviation emissions were 70% higher than in 2005 and could grow by 300% by 2050, even as efficiency per revenue ton-kilometer fell to 47% of 1990 levels.
Fixed-wing aircraft use control surfaces: ailerons to bank and roll, elevators to pitch, and a rudder on the vertical stabilizer to control yaw. Rotorcraft steer mainly by cyclically tilting the rotor blades, and helicopters use a tail rotor to counter the rotational thrust of the main rotor.