4/29/2023 0 Comments Katherine johnson nasa report![]() Or that she would go on to complete graduate work at the university before becoming a NASA employee. Or that she would graduate summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and French. Those women, of course, all started out as girls much like Johnson, who didn’t know she would become one of the first Black students to attend West Virginia State College (now known as WVU). This month, Northrop Grumman named its NG-15 Cygnus spacecraft after her, and WVU will hold a panel discussion to “celebrate Black History Month and honor Katherine Johnson and the legacy of strong women she inspired.” Johnson died in February 2020, but her legacy continues to inspire people of all races and genders today. Johnson became so respected within NASA that she was asked to the join the team behind the first lunar landing in 1969 and more than a decade later, she also worked on the space shuttle. “She has such a towering talent, but she has gone out of her way to recognize talent in other people,” Shetterly said at the time. Shetterly, the author of Hidden Figures, gave the keynote address. She received that honor during a ceremony that also saw a $30 million, 40,000-square-foot Computational Research Facility being named in her honor. Melvin presented her with the Silver Snoopy Award, which is given for outstanding achievements related to human flight safety or mission success.īy then, Johnson was 97 years old. In 2015, President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is given to people who have made “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” In 2016, NASA astronaut Leland D. She also was involved with planning for a mission to Mars. Johnson was figuring out complex mathematics for space flights years before NASA came to rely on computers.Īfter that, Johnson did calculations that helped with the start of the Space Shuttle program. She helped to calculate the trajectory for America’s first trip to space in 1961, and for the first moon landing in 1969. By the time President Kennedy decided to send a man to the moon, Johnson was so respected that she was asked to join the team. At some point, the men simply got used to her being in the room and asking questions. Johnson soon found herself as the lone woman sitting in rooms full of white men during meetings and briefings, with her abilities impressing more and more people every day. ![]() As NASA puts it today, “None of the other women had ever asked questions before, but by asking questions, Johnson began to stand out.” Engineers would assign her mathematical problems to solve, which she did while challenging the status quo and asking them why and how they were assigning the problems in the first place. Johnson started working at NASA in 1953, back when it was still called the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. The film told the story that author Margot Lee Shetterly detailed in her book by the same name, about Black female mathematicians who worked at NASA during the space race. ![]() Henson portrayed her in the 2016 film Hidden Figures (as part of the Screen Actors Guild Award-winning cast). Much of the world learned that story-and the fact that Johnson even existed-more than a half-century later, when Taraji P. “If she says the computer is right,” he said. Astronaut John Glenn asked Johnson to double-check the math against a computer that had calculated Friendship 7’s path in space.
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