NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., said May 23 that it has completed wind-tunnel testing for Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) to provide the Hawthorne, Calif.-based company with re-entry data for the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage.

Under a Reimbursable Space Act Agreement, Marshall conducted 176 runs in its wind tunnel test facility on the Falcon 9 first stage to provide SpaceX with test data that will be used to develop a re-entry database for the recovery of the Falcon 9 first stage.