The Rogallo wing is a flexible type of airfoil

Airfoil

An airfoil or aerofoil is the shape of a wing or blade or sail as seen in cross-section....

. In 1948, Gertrude Rogallo

Gertrude Rogallo

Gertrude Rogallo was one of the co-inventors of the flexible wing. These wings are now known as Rogallo wings. She and her husband, Francis Rogallo, invented the wing and obtained two US patents on different versions of it in the early 1950s. Rogallo wings are commonly used today in kites, hang...

, and her husband Francis Rogallo

Francis Rogallo

Francis Melvin Rogallo was an American aeronautical engineer inventor born in Sanger, California, U.S.A.; he is credited with the invention of the Rogallo wing, or "flexible wing", a precursor to the modern hang glider and paraglider...

, a NASA

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

 engineer, invented a self-inflating flexible wing they called the Parawing, also known after them as the "Rogallo Wing" and flexible wing. NASA considered Rogallo's flexible wing as an alternative recovery system for the Gemini space capsule

Project Gemini

Project Gemini was the second human spaceflight program of NASA, the civilian space agency of the United States government. Project Gemini was conducted between projects Mercury and Apollo, with ten manned flights occurring in 1965 and 1966....

 and for possible use in other spacecraft landings, but the idea was dropped in 1964 in favor of parachutes.
Rogallo had been interested in the flexible wing since 1945.