The NASA X-38 Crew Return Vehicle (CRV) is a vehicle designed to act as an emergency lifeboat for the International Space Station (ISS) in the case of a medical emergency or the need to evacuate the structure. Modeled after the Martin Marietta X-23A lifting body, the vehicle employs a large parafoil to enable the craft to land safely and within a short distance of a designated area. A recently completed joint effort between ISU and NASA/JSC has provided preliminary experimental data dealing with the aerodynamic forces that act on the recovery parafoil. A hard cast model of one segment of the parafoil in a first stage deployment state was provided by JSC researchers to be tested in an ISU wind tunnel. Lift and drag forces were measured over a wide range of angles of attack for each of several Reynolds numbers. Wind tunnel tests indicate that the parafoil in a first stage deployment state behaves much like a flap plate. The results obtained in this effort will help researchers better understand parafoil inflation dynamics and provide comparative data for tuning CFD tools for future parafoil deployment simulations.