Shetterly told The Associated Press on Monday that Johnson was “exceptional in every way.”
“It took a day and a half of watching the tiny digits pile up: eye-numbing, disorienting work,” Shetterly wrote. “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. READ MORE: ‘Hidden Figures’ and the journey to celebrate NASA’s black female pioneers
Katherine johnson nasa calculations 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. Johnson was one of the “computers” who solved equations by hand during NASA’s early years and those of its precursor organization, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. Her story and her grace continue to inspire the world.” No cause was given.īridenstine tweeted that the NASA family “will never forget Katherine Johnson’s courage and the milestones we could not have reached without her. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said on Twitter that she died Monday morning. Katherine’s passion was maths.Katherine Johnson, a mathematician who calculated rocket trajectories and earth orbits for NASA’s early space missions and was later portrayed in the 2016 hit film “Hidden Figures,” about pioneering black female aerospace workers, has died. Katherine encouraged her grandchildren and students to pursue careers in science and technology. Two NASA facilities have been named in Katherine's honour and in 2015, the then US President Barack Obama awarded 97-year-old Katherine the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honour. The 2016 film, ‘Hidden Figures’, tells the story of how the work of Katherine and other Black women helped NASA win the space race. Katherine co-authored 26 scientific papers and continued to work for NASA until she retired in 1986. She was part of the team that got the Apollo 13 crew back to Earth safely when their spacecraft malfunctioned. Katherine also helped calculate the trajectory for the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first people on the Moon. The astronaut John Glenn requested that Katherine check the calculations made by electronic computers before his spaceflight on Friendship 7 – “If she says they’re good,’” the astronaut said, “then I’m ready to go.” The path a rocket follows is also known as its trajectory. As a “computer”, she calculated the trajectory that put the first American in space. Katherine used her maths skills to calculate the paths of rockets through space. In 1953 she started a job carrying out mathematical calculations at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), later known as NASA. She then took a break from studying and teaching to have children. In 1939, Katherine became the first Black woman to study for a postgraduate qualification at West Virginia University. She graduated with the highest honours in 1937 and took a job teaching at a Black public school in Virginia. Katherine was curious about numbers from an early age and took every course in maths she could at West Virginia State College. Her mother was a teacher and her father a farmer and handyman. Katherine Johnson grew up in West Virginia, USA. Research Areas: Rocket Flightpaths, Trajectories, Orbital Mechanics
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