If I gave you that answer last year, it’s the same now. Katherine loved maths and worked for the space agency, NASA. She was also responsible for calculating the trajectories that enabled the Apollo 11 to land both on the moon, and back on Earth once Neil Armstrong’s mission was complete. And it was a joy to contribute to the literature that was going to be coming out.īut you know, math is the same. Image courtesy of NASA Her work was proven when the Mercury capsule landed right where it was supposed to, after Glenn completed his orbit of the Earth. Johnson stands among NASA’s most inspirational figures. Johnson became the first African American woman computer to have her name on a technical paper issued by NASAs Langley Research Center. In 1961, Johnson calculated the flight path for Americas first astronaut launched into space. The Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position was the first space. But on paper neither of those facts would make her stand out from the crowd.
She was a mathematician and she worked for NASA. Johnson was a trailblazer at a time when minorities had very few positions in mathematics and science. Get custom essay 123 writers online Katherine Johnson was an African-American mathematician from 1953 to 1986 working for NASA. I like the stars and the stories we were telling. Johnson: A NASA Trailblazer NASA mathematician, trailblazer in the quest for racial equality, contributor to our nation’s first triumphs in human spaceflight and champion of STEM education, Katherine G. On February 24, 2020, Katherine Johnson passed away at age 101. Katherine Johnson, who has died at the age of 101. You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers. 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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