Flight testing has always been one of the most resource-intensive stages in aircraft development. Validating how an aircraft responds to stress, temperature, and aerodynamic forces requires gathering enormous volumes of data across thousands of points in real time. Traditionally, this has meant miles of wiring, bulky sensors, and heavy instrumentation that add weight, slow down testing cycles, and increase both costs and environmental impact.
NASA, like many organisations at the forefront of aerospace research, faced a critical question: how do you modernise this process to make it more efficient, precise, and sustainable without compromising safety or performance?
The answer, developed at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Centre in California, has been the Fibre Optic Sensing System (FOSS): an innovative approach that replaces hundreds of conventional strain gauges with lightweight, hair-thin optical fibres capable of measuring strain and temperature continuously along their length. But implementing this system at the scale needed for military and aerospace aircraft testing presented another major challenge: how to process and act on vast amounts of distributed sensor data in real time. And that is where Red Pitaya’s STEMlab 125-14 came in.
Why NASA turned to fibre optics
Traditional strain gauges have served the aerospace industry for decades, but their limitations are increasingly incompatible with modern aircraft programmes. Wiring harnesses can run for miles, adding significant weight to already complex vehicles. Each additional sensor requires its own installation, calibration, and maintenance, increasing both time and costs.
Fibre-optic sensing changes this paradigm. With a single strand of fibre, engineers can monitor thousands of points across a wing, fuselage, or propulsion system. This allows them to ‘see’ how the aircraft behaves dynamically, from subtle wing deflections to thermal stresses during high-altitude climbs. The sustainability benefits are equally important: less wiring means lighter aircraft, lower fuel consumption during testing, and faster, more efficient test cycles.
The move toward fibre optics reflects a broader trend in aerospace: reducing complexity while expanding capability. But to unlock the full value of this system, NASA needed hardware that could deliver deterministic, ultra-low-latency acquisition and Edge processing in demanding flight conditions.
The technical challenge
Fibre optics is only as valuable as the systems that interpret the data. Unlike traditional sensors that provide specific measurements, fibre optics generates large streams of distributed data that must be captured, synchronised, and processed in real time. The requirements are strict:
- Low latency – delays of even microseconds can invalidate data during high-stress manoeuvres
- Precision timing – each data point must be aligned to reflect the true conditions at any given moment
- Reliability – the system must withstand vibration, temperature swings, and other harsh conditions of flight
NASA’s challenge was clear: build a data acquisition and processing pipeline capable of keeping pace with the speed and complexity of flight, while maintaining the portability and resilience needed for real-world deployment.
The solution: FPGA-enabled Edge processing
To address this, NASA integrated the Red Pitaya STEMlab 125-14 into the FOSS system. Roughly the size of a credit card, our platform combines a CPU and FPGA with fast signal acquisition in a compact, lightweight unit. This allows bare-metal firmware execution for deterministic timing, enabling the system to capture and process signals at the Edge without latency or bottlenecks.
The form factor proved particularly valuable. Integrating into modern aircraft often means fitting into already crowded test bays or avionics racks. Traditional data acquisition systems are often too large and power-hungry for this environment. Red Pitaya’s compact design gave NASA the flexibility to deploy multiple units seamlessly, reducing the need for bulky cabling while expanding sensing coverage.
Equally important, Red Pitaya’s modular and open software workflow allowed NASA engineers to tailor the platform to their specific needs, ensuring that FOSS could evolve alongside mission requirements without any vendor lock-in.
Results: greener, faster, more efficient flight testing
By pairing fibre-optic sensing with Red Pitaya, NASA has been able to demonstrate a new model for flight testing that is lighter, cleaner, and more efficient than traditional methods. Key outcomes include:
- Higher channel density – thousands of sensing points captured along a single fibre, far exceeding the capacity of discrete strain gauges
- Reduced cabling and weight – eliminating miles of wiring, directly reducing fuel consumption during test flights
- Faster setup and turnaround – cutting down the time required to instrument and prepare aircraft for testing
The sustainability impact is particularly notable. By reducing materials, wiring, and flight hours, this approach lowers the carbon footprint of military and aerospace testing while maintaining, and even improving, test fidelity.
Broader applications: from aerospace to spaceflight
This use case can go beyond aircraft testing. The potential of fibre-optic sensing systems paired with Red Pitaya’s FPGA-enabled acquisition can be explored for a range of critical applications, including cryogenic fuel monitoring, monitoring temperatures on inflatable space structures, and corrosion tracking on Navy ships.
As NASA prepares for programmes like Artemis, and as commercial aerospace companies accelerate spacecraft and hypersonic vehicle development, the demand for compact, reliable, and scalable sensing platforms will only grow. With the launch of STEMlab 125-14 Gen 2, Red Pitaya has introduced major enhancements in precision, noise performance, and synchronisation. These improvements open new possibilities for NASA engineers and other researchers who require even higher fidelity in demanding environments.
A model for sustainable innovation
At its core, the NASA–Red Pitaya collaboration proves that sustainability and performance are not mutually exclusive. By rethinking the instrumentation behind f light testing, engineers can reduce costs, accelerate timelines, and improve environmental outcomes, all while pushing the boundaries of aerospace technology.
This model of innovation – pairing open, flexible platforms with mission-driven engineering – is increasingly relevant across industries. From life sciences to quantum research, Red Pitaya’s approach has enabled researchers to bridge the gap between professional-grade instrumentation and accessible, developer-focused tools. In NASA’s case, it has shown that a credit card–sized platform can make a measurable impact on how we design, test, and fly the aircraft of the future.
As aerospace programmes evolve, flight testing will continue to demand higher precision, faster feedback loops, and greener methodologies. For Red Pitaya, the collaboration with NASA validates our mission to democratise advanced instrumentation and empower innovation at every level, from high school classrooms to space-grade applications.
Author: Mateja Lampe Rupnik, CEO, Red Pitaya
This article originally appeared in the embedded world North America supplement of Electronic Specifier Design – see ES’s Magazine Archives for more featured publications.
