Katherine Johnson has rightfully been called a "hero" by NASA Administrator James Bridenstine.
However, her renown grew, and Katherine Johnson is now a household name for any computer science or mathematics professional or enthusiast. (Many of them, like her, worked at the Langley research facility.) But even if he could not deign to remember her name, history surely will.Īt the time, Katherine's groundbreaking contributions were known only within NASA and a community of African Americans she knew in the Hampton Roads area. "Get the girl to check the numbers," he said. In 1962, John Glenn wanted her to verify the computer's calculations for the mission of orbiting the Earth. Katherine had a strong reputation for accuracy. She would go on to author or co-author 26 research reports in her illustrious career. This was the first time a woman in her division received any credit as a writer of a research report. In 1960, Katherine co-authored a paper on calculations for putting a spacecraft into orbit. (Astronaut Alan Shepard of the Freedom 7 mission returned safely from space in large part thanks to her.) But she was most proud of her work on the Apollo moon mission. Katherine calculated the trajectories of some of the US' earliest space exploration expeditions. Public Domain Image of the Langley Research Center, Aerial View In 1953, she was hired at NASA (then called NACA – the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) at the West Area Computing unit. In 1940, she became one of only three black students selected to join the graduate school in the then-all-white West Virginia University. Her subjects were math and, perhaps more surprisingly, French.
She received a full academic scholarship to West Virginia State College (currently West Virginia State University) and graduated summa cum laude at the age of eighteen in 1937. Born in 1918, Katherine was a highly intelligent child by the age of ten, she had begun high school. If that sounds impressive, it's because it is. Upon joining the Project Mercury program, she said, "Tell me where you want the man to land, and I'll tell you where to send him up." That is, she was given the splashdown point by the engineers, and would then tell them where to aim the rocket. The ship is filled with several tons of waste from the orbiting outpost.Īnother supply ship bound for the ISS is scheduled to be launched later Tuesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.Katherine Johnson was a "computer" – a person who did complex calculations for disciplines such as navigation and astronomy. Thursday evening, the supply ship fires its engines one last time and re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere where it will burn up. Her calculations contributed to the Februmission in which John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth.Īfter departure from the space station, the Katherine Johnson was to remain in Earth orbit to deploy five cube satellites, including one designed to study the Earth’s ionosphere, a layer of electrons in its upper atmosphere, along with an educational satellite from Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi.
Katherine Johnson, after the African American NASA mathematician whose work was made famous in the movie Hidden Figures.
The Cygnus supply ship, built by the Northrop Grumman aerospace company, is named the S.S. A unmanned NASA resupply ship, docked at the International Space Station (ISS) since February, departed Tuesday on one last mission to deploy satellites before burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere.