![]() ![]() The engineers would give her the splashdown point, and she would tell them where to aim the rocket. “Tell me where you want the man to land, and I’ll tell you where to send him up,” she said upon joining the Project Mercury program. Johnson also, in this case, literally worked backward. As a Black woman in segregated America, she embodied the adage about Ginger Rogers - who did everything Fred Astaire did, only backward and in heels - in the sense that she had to overcome countless barriers to win a respected place among a largely white, male NASA staff. ![]() Johnson at that time was a “human computer,” a job title for people - usually women - assigned to do the complex calculations underlying scientific disciplines such as astronomy and navigation. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.“Let me do it,” Katherine Johnson famously said when, in the late 1950s, her NASA colleagues were looking for a mathematician to join the team working to launch the first American into space. Her legendary career with NASA lasted from 1953 to 1986.Ĭopyright 2018, a Purch company. She ran the same calculations by hand that the computer had run, and Glenn said, according to Johnson, “If she says they’re good, then I’m ready to go.” ![]() The mission’s orbital calculations, which controlled the trajectory of the capsule for the mission, were programmed by a computer, but Glenn asked engineers to “get the girl”-referring to Katherine Johnson-to validate the calculations. The mission required a complicated worldwide communications network. Johnson’s most famous work, spotlighted in “Hidden Figures,” was for John Glenn’s orbital mission in 1962. 24, 2015, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington. President Barack Obama presents former NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Nov. This was the first time that a woman received author credit for a research report in the Flight Research Division. She co-authored the paper Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position, which detailed the equations that describe an orbital spaceflight where the craft’s landing position is specified. Johnson analyzed flight test data and even completed trajectory analysis for Freedom 7, America’s first human spaceflight. Today, retired mathematician Katherine Johnson makes her 100th trip around the Sun as she celebrates her birthday! Send her birthday wishes using #Happy100Katherine & learn about her calculations that launched to space : /DVvVYnrupe The lab was headed by Dorothy Vaughan, who came from West Virginia, just as Johnson did. Discover other life lessons from this trailblazer: #Happy100Katherine /s0KIhj704WĪn unstoppable force and a role model to young African-American women, Johnson began her career at NASA’s Langley Research Center in 1953 after one of her relatives told her about open positions at an all-black West Area Computing section at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ (NACA’s) Langley laboratory. “You are as good as anyone in this town, but you are no better than any of them,” says retired mathematician Katherine Johnson, who celebrates her 100th birthday today. Henson in the feature film “Hidden Figures,” began her career at NASA on a team of black women who were also referred to as “human computers.” Like the other women in this group, Johnson broke down barriers as an African-American woman, despite anti-black prejudice. Johnson is a retired NASA Langley mathematician who was integral to developing human spaceflight in America. Johnson, one of NASA’s “human computers” whose calculations propelled NASA spacecraft to the stars, turned 100 on Aug. Katherine Johnson-a mathematician at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia who helped make human spaceflight possible-celebrated 100 trips around the sun this weekend. ![]()
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