Marta Bohn-Meyer

Marta Bohn-Meyer was chief engineer at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, and a widely known precision aerobatic pilot. Bohn-Meyer, 48, died Sept. 18, 2005, when the Giles G-300 she was flying crashed as she was beginning an aerobatic practice routine near the C.E. Page Airport in Yukon, Oklahoma.

Bohn-Meyer joined NASA Armstrong (then Dryden) in 1979 as an aeronautical research and operations engineer. She was appointed chief engineer in October 2001 after serving in a series of increasingly responsible positions, including director of flight operations, director of safety and mission assurance, deputy director of flight operations, deputy director of aerospace projects and project manager for the F-16 XL Supersonic Laminar Flow Control project.

She earned a Bachelor of Science in aeronautical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. From 1976 to 1979, Bohn-Meyer was a student in the school’s cooperative education program at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and participated in rotorcraft research as well as wind tunnel and flight safety projects associated with small civil aircraft.

Bohn-Meyer worked on a variety of research projects, specializing in flight test operations, developing test techniques and laminar flow research. Among these projects were flight tests of space shuttle thermal protection tiles with a NASA F-104, B-57 gust gradient evaluations and the F-14 aileron-rudder interconnect and variable sweep transition laminar flow programs, in addition to her work on the F-16XL laminar flow project before becoming project manager.

She was one of two flight engineers assigned to fly in the SR-71 high-speed flight research program at Dryden. She was the first female crewmember from NASA or the U.S. Air Force – and the second woman – to fly in one of the triple-sonic SR-71s. NASA used the SR-71s to obtain high-speed, high-altitude data that can be applied to improve the designs of future civil and military aircraft.

Bohn-Meyer authored several publications and reports on sailplane performance, laminar flow experiments and composite construction. In 1996 she received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal “for exceptional service in flight operations and project management in support of several national flight research programs.” She was awarded the Aerospace Educator Award in 1998 from Women in Aerospace and in 1992 received the Arthur C. Fleming Award in the scientific category.

Bohn-Meyer was a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)-certified flight instructor and listed competitive aerobatics flying, aircraft building and classic car restoration among her hobbies. A frequent participant in education programs, particularly for girls, she was a role model for young women interested in entering into technical fields.