Johnson was included in the list of "BBC 100 Women," a list of 100 inspiring and influential women from around the globe. This occurred on the 55th anniversary of Alan Shepard's historic rocket launch and splashdown, which Johnson helped make possible. Johnson Computational Research Facility was formally dedicated at the agency’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The movie was set for release in December. The following year, principal production began for Hidden Figures, a movie about Johnson and her Black colleagues at NASA, based on the non-fiction book of the same name. In 2015, President Barack Obama included Johnson on a list of 17 Americans to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Johnson was given an Honorary Doctor of Laws, SUNY Farmingdale (1998), and West Virginia State College Outstanding Alumnus of the Year (1999). Johnson was the recipient of the Group Achievement Award, NASA's Lunar Spacecraft and Operations. For her pioneering work in the field of navigation problems, she was the recipient of the Group Achievement Award presented to NASA's Lunar Spacecraft and Operations team. Later, she studied new navigation procedures to determine more practical ways to track manned and unmanned space missions. Johnson analyzed data gathered by tracking stations around the world during the lunar orbital missions-the Apollo moon missions. The spacecraft includes the Earth Resources Satellite, which has helped locate underground minerals and other earth resources. She has worked on challenging problems of interplanetary trajectories, space navigation, and the orbits of spacecraft. She was an Aerospace Technologist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia. Johnson worked for NASA with the tracking teams of manned and unmanned orbital missions. She was born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and was trained as a mathematician and physicist at West Virginia State University. ![]() She was a Black physicist, space scientist, and mathematician. If I gave you that answer last year, it’s the same now. And it was a joy to contribute to the literature that was going to be coming out.īut you know, math is the same. I like the stars and the stories we were telling. The main thing is I liked what I was doing. I didn’t do anything alone but try to go to the root of the question – and succeeded there. Her calculations proved critical to the success of the Apollo Moon landings and the start of the Space Shuttle program. ![]() Katherine continued to work at NASA until 1986. But when they went to computers, they called over and said, "Tell her to check and see if the computer trajectory they had calculated was correct." So I checked it, and it was correct. You could do much more, much faster on the computer. You tell me when you want it and where you want it to land, and I'll do it backward and tell you when to take off." That was my forte.Įven after NASA had electronic computers, John Glenn requested that Katherine personally recheck the computer calculations before his 1962 Friendship 7 flight – the first American mission to orbit Earth. As a human computer, Katherine calculated the trajectory for astronaut Alan Shepard’s 1961 Freedom 7 mission to space – the first spaceflight for an American.Įarly on, when they said they wanted the capsule to come down at a certain place, they were trying to compute when it should start.
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