NASA’s Newest Wind Tunnel Builds on Legacy of Innovation

For more than 100 years, wind tunnels at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, have helped shape the future of flight.  

Now, two of NASA’s longest-serving facilities — the 12-Foot Low-Speed Tunnel and the 20-Foot Vertical Spin Tunnel — will pass the torch to the Flight Dynamics Research Facility (FDRF), the first major NASA wind tunnel built in more than 40 years.  

“The FDRF has a combination of features found in no other single facility in the world,” said Mike Fremaux, retired chief engineer for the Intelligent Flight Systems division at NASA Langley. “It’s a high-performance vertical wind tunnel with a large test section capable of conducting all manner of tests to assess the dynamics of flight vehicles.”  

When the FDRF opens later this year, it will provide enhanced versions of the capabilities offered by the two legacy facilities. The FDRF’s test section will allow researchers to drop models into a rising vertical airflow. This will offer researchers the ability to conduct spin tests of aircraft and free-flight tests of vehicles designed to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere from space.  

The FDRF will play an integral role in conducting research that supports NASA’s aeronautics, science, and space exploration missions. Like many NASA facilities, the FDRF’s story is rooted in a history of innovation.

12-Foot Low-Speed Tunnel  

When the 12-Foot Low-Speed Tunnel began operations in 1939, aviation looked very different than it does today.

It was built for NASA’s predecessor agency, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to study the controllability of airplanes using free flight. Aircraft models flew unsupported in the wind it generated, instead of being mounted to supports. Multiple operators used rudimentary remote controls to operate the models in the tunnel.  

The facility that housed the tunnel boasted a unique design: a 60-foot diameter sphere. The configuration allowed the tunnel to move and adapt to the flight paths of free flying models. “Pilots” could use hydraulic actuators, pivoting the tunnel’s test section to match the models’ movements. The spherical design made it easy for air from the facility’s fan to recirculate through the tunnel, regardless of the pitch angle of the test section.  

In 1958, NASA moved the free-flight tests to another Langley tunnel. The agency deactivated the 12-Foot’s hydraulic actuators, fixing its test section into a horizontal position, and began using it for more conventional testing, looking at how aerodynamic force affected the stability and control of strut-mounted models.

The 12-Foot supported major projects throughout its 86 years of service, from the transition from bi-planes to monoplanes between two world wars, through the development of supersonic aircraft. Revolutionary designs saw testing in the 12-Foot, from the forward-swept-wing X-29 and the X-31 Enhanced Fighter Maneuverability Demonstrator, to the more recent X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft, and the aeroshell for NASA’s Dragonfly, a unique rotorcraft designed to explore Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.  

The 12-Foot closed in 2025, but its legacy will be both felt and seen at the FDRF. Six wooden fan blades and the central metal fan hub from the 12-Foot are on display inside the FDRF’s control room.  

20-Foot Vertical Spin Tunnel  

While the 12-Foot tested new ideas for aircraft and components, the 20-Foot Vertical Spin Tunnel played a critical role in aviation safety.  

Opened in 1941, the Vertical Spin Tunnel was designed to study aircraft stall and spin characteristics. Its aim was to prevent deadly accidents in which an aircraft enters an uncontrolled spin. The vertical design allowed models to fall into the rising airflow, simulating how aircraft behave during a spin. Researchers hand-launched models into the tunnel’s vertically rising airstream to evaluate those characteristics.  

The tunnel quickly became one of the most important spin-testing facilities in the world. Research supported commercial aviation, parachute design systems, NASA space missions, and the development of nearly every U.S. military aircraft designed since World War II.  

Models from many of those tests will be on display in the FDRF’s lobby, a testament to the Vertical Spin Tunnel’s rich history.  

“It is great to showcase the legacy of work that started in the NACA days and will continue going forward for decades to come,” Fremaux said.

New era of flight research

The FDRF will continue NASA’s commitment to world-class facilities and the unique expertise of the agency’s workforce.  

“That’s what kept those other facilities going,” Fremaux said. “Not just the buildings, the fans, and the motors, but also the expertise associated with those facilities. You can’t have one without the other.”  

The FDRF will build not only on the history of the 12-Foot tunnel and the Vertical Spin Tunnel, but on their equipment, including many of their major test rigs, instrumentation, and data systems, were repurposed for use in the FDRF, reducing costs and development time.  

As NASA returns astronauts to the Moon through the Artemis program, the FDRF will play a vital role in testing the technologies for entry, descent, and landing that will ensure a safe return to Earth. Research within the FDRF also will support science missions to planets and moons with atmospheres, such as Venus and Saturn’s moon, Titan. The 25,000-square-foot facility will play a major role in experimental research for NASA’s development of X-planes, autonomous flight vehicles, and drones.  

“For me, seeing FDRF come alive and being prepared to begin supporting important agency missions, after 30 years of working on the concept behind the scenes with formal and informal teams of motivated, innovative coworkers, is the most rewarding capstone I could have in my career,” Fremaux said.  

Just as the 12-Foot Low-Speed Tunnel and the 20-Foot Vertical Spin Tunnel supported decades of aerospace innovation, the FDRF is ready to shape the future of flight.

Kimiko Booker
NASA Langley Research Center

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Flight engineer Sophie Adenot of ESA (European Space Agency) helps flight engineer Chris Williams of NASA as he tries on his spacesuit on June 23, 2026, testing its comfort and mobility as well as its communications and life support systems inside the International Space Station’s Quest airlock.

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Mapping Earth’s Observations, featuring Betsy Ford

NASA’s Earth-observing satellites track an enormous range of phenomena: how aerosols move through the atmosphere, how moisture descends through soil, how land-cover shifts over decades. It’s some of the most consequential data NASA produces, informing science, policy, agriculture, and climate research around the world.

As NASA’s Earth Science Division (ESD) manages this vast portfolio, they operate within an environment marked by significant complexity. This system-of-systems is continually evolving as mission requirements develop, new capabilities come online while others are retired, and international partnerships shift over time. All of this happens against a backdrop of deep uncertainty in technology readiness, launch opportunities, and resource availability.

“It reaches more people than most realize. The farmers who are growing your food use the data from these satellites.”

“ESD leadership is constantly navigating this complicated landscape,” says Betsy Ford, a decision analyst and Deputy Team Lead for the NASA Earth Science Strategic Integration Environment (NESSIE) team within the Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate (SACD) at NASA’s Langley Research Center. “Our work focuses on integrating information across the broad system-of-systems so that these decision-makers can visualize the current state, how things could evolve, and how all of it lines up against NASA’s long-term scientific priorities.”

A Detour Through Detroit

Ford’s path to this work runs through two vastly different worlds, and it all started before she could even drive.

Both of her parents spent their careers at NASA Langley and recently retired from it. Growing up, Ford attended the center’s daycare and its summer picnics. “It always felt like a college campus and a big family,” she says. “I really loved that.”

Still, when she graduated from Virginia Tech with a mechanical engineering degree, she chose to branch out first. She joined General Motors’ engineering rotation program in Michigan, spending time as a mass integration engineer for Corvette before moving to  work as a vehicle occupant safety engineer performing crash testing. She was also finishing a master’s in engineering management at the University of Nebraska, where she was introduced to risk analysis and strategic decision making.

When a position opened in the Space Mission Analysis Branch (part of SACD), she applied, hoping her experience in systems engineering and master’s might offset the gap between the hardware testing of running vehicles into walls and the analytical work NASA needed. “Leadership saw potential in my background and gave me a chance to apply it in a new context,” she says.

Finding the Story in the Data

At its core, NESSIE addresses an information architecture problem. Hundreds of Earth-observing satellite missions, both NASA’s and its partners,’ each observing specific phenomena, from cloud cover to land use. That data has always existed. The challenge was making sense of it all in one place.

NESSIE’s main web application page presents a heat map showing which missions are addressing 34 science observables alongside a mission timeline. Additional views drill down further, such as which specific instruments on which spacecraft cover a given measurement, and how international partner collaborations have evolved over the years.

“We focus on continuous improvement,” Ford explains. “Each iteration aims to give our stakeholders a clearer, more useful product than they had the day before.” While supporting NASA headquarters in its strategic planning, the team is working toward making NESSIE available to the National Academies to help inform the next decadal survey, a document that will define national science priorities and guide government investments into the next decade. It’s a milestone that Ford describes as a significant step toward “using NESSIE to more fully support the scientific community through clearer data-driven planning of future missions.”

Ground Truth

Ford had always cared about Earth science in the abstract. It took a visit to her family’s farm in Nebraska to make it concrete.

She was explaining her work with satellites, observables, and web applications, when her relatives pulled out their phones and showed her satellite data they use every day to monitor soil moisture across their fields. Then they showed her the tool it had once replaced: a metal rod they used to shove into the ground by hand to measure moisture levels.

“That’s just one example of how impactful this work can be,” she says. “It reaches more people than most realize. The farmers who are growing your food use the data from these satellites.”

When Ford wonders why the work matters, that moment is a powerful reminder for her. The satellites are the visible part of the story. The decisions about which ones to build, launch, and sustain, and the tools that make those decisions smarter, are what her work is about.

Growing the Team

Ford recently stepped into the deputy lead role on the NESSIE team, staffed primarily by early-career engineers. She credits mentors in her NASA tenure, particularly team lead Marie Ivanco, who modeled a method to looking at complex problems that shaped how Ford works now.

“If you’re faced with a challenge, Marie asks, ‘What is your process?” Ford says. “She championed really decomposing a problem and approaching it systematically. That wasn’t natural to me at that point, but I really admired it.”

Now Ford’s doing the same for others. “Finding that balance of providing the opportunities to grow along with some structure and guidance, that’s the job.”

She also believes that NASA offers anyone entering engineering the freedom to define problems and solutions rather than to just execute known processes, and to exercise research instincts in ways that more prescriptive industry environments rarely allow. “It prompts a lot more creativity,” she says. “Getting to flex those research muscles is an opportunity I didn’t really have at other jobs.”

On Ford’s Sci-Fi Shelf

Star Wars — the film franchise

Ford grew up in a Star Wars household: her father was a devoted fan, and she still remembers her first PG-13 movie in theaters, one of the newer films in the series. These days her husband keeps the tradition going, and with a 15-month-old son, Saturday morning Star Wars cartoons may already be on the calendar.

“He’s very excited to get him started.”

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NextSTEP-3 A: Lunar Enabling Technology

Solicitation Number: 80GRC026R0008 
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