- #Katherine johnson nasa 100 movie how to#
- #Katherine johnson nasa 100 movie movie#
- #Katherine johnson nasa 100 movie professional#
“Katherine organized herself immediately at her desk, growing phone-book-thick stacks of data sheets a number at a time, blocking out everything except the labyrinth of trajectory equations,” Margot Lee Shetterly wrote in her 2016 book “Hidden Figures,” on which the film is based. “Get the girl to check the numbers,” a computer-skeptical Glenn had insisted in the days before the launch. The next year, she manually verified the calculations of a nascent NASA computer, an IBM 7090, which plotted John Glenn’s orbits around the planet.
In 1961, Johnson did trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 Mission, the first to carry an American into space.
#Katherine johnson nasa 100 movie how to#
“You tell me when and where you want it to come down, and I will tell you where and when and how to launch it.” “Our office computed all the (rocket) trajectories,” Johnson told The Virginian-Pilot newspaper in 2012. But her work at NASA’s Langley Research Center eventually shifted to Project Mercury, the nation’s first human space program. Johnson focused on airplanes and other research at first. Signs had dictated which bathrooms the women could use.
Johnson and other black women initially worked in a racially segregated computing unit in Hampton, Virginia, that wasn’t officially dissolved until NACA became NASA in 1958. Today, we celebrate her 101 years of life and honor her legacy of excellence that broke down racial and social barriers: /dGiGmEVvAW We’re saddened by the passing of celebrated #HiddenFigures mathematician Katherine Johnson.
“Hidden Figures” also told the stories of fellow pioneers Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, and the key role they played in the Space Race.WHYY thanks our sponsors - become a WHYY sponsor “They didn’t have time to be concerned about what color I was.”
#Katherine johnson nasa 100 movie professional#
“NASA was a very professional organization,” Johnson was quoted as saying in 2010. “And there will always, always be mathematics.”īlack women at first used separate office, dining and bathroom facilities, but their abilities won them a level of acceptance by NASA that was ahead of its time in the US. NASA said Johnson often told students that “some things will drop out of the public eye and will go away, but there will always be science, engineering and technology. “Ms Johnson helped our nation enlarge the frontiers of space even as she made huge strides that also opened doors for women and people of color,” Bridenstine said in a statement.Įarly in her career, Johnson used just pen, paper and a slide rule to make calculations on which potentially-deadly missions depended.Īlong with colleagues, she plotted John Glenn’s course when he became the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962.īefore embarking on the mission, Glenn asked that Johnson personally re-check the computer-produced figures on a mechanical calculating machine - a task that took one and a half days of intense work. Two years later, Johnson - then aged 98 - attended the 2017 Oscars when “Hidden Figures” was nominated, taking the stage to receive a standing ovation amid thunderous applause. US president Barack Obama presented Johnson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the country, in 2015. Her math talents later helped determine the trajectory of the Apollo 11 flight that landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon in July 1969. Johnson and a colleague were the first to calculate the parameters of the suborbital 1961 flight of astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American in space. “She was an American hero and her pioneering legacy will never be forgotten,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said, honoring “her courage and the milestones we could not have reached without her.”
#Katherine johnson nasa 100 movie movie#
Johnson’s calculations helped put the first man on the Moon in 1969, but she was little known until the Oscar-nominated 2016 movie that told the stories of three black women who worked at NASA. Katherine Johnson, a ground-breaking black NASA mathematician whose life was portrayed in the movie “Hidden Figures,” died on Monday aged 101, the space agency said. NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson was an unsung hero of space exploration until long after her retirment
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