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 Featured 5 min readNASA Analysis Confirms a Year of Monthly Temperature Recordsarticle2 days ago Hubble Finds Surprises Around a Star That Erupted 40 Years Ago4 min readHubble Finds Surprises Around a Star That Erupted 40 Years Agoarticle3 days ago The specks in this Mars scene were caused by charged particles6 min readNASA Watches Mars Light Up During Epic Solar Stormarticle3 days ago
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 Highlights Voyager 1 Returning Science Data From All Four Instruments

	2 min read

		Voyager 1 Returning Science Data From All Four Instruments

		article

			40 mins ago WL20 group of stars is located in the Rho Ophiuchi star-forming region

	5 min read

		NASA’s Webb Reveals Long-Studied Star Is Actually Twins

		article

			6 hours ago Mars Dunes

	5 min read

		NASA’s Perseverance Fords an Ancient River to Reach Science Target

		article

			9 hours ago
 Highlights A woman with long, wavy hair and a bright smile sits at a round table during a formal event, surrounded by other attendees. She is wearing a brown cardigan and a patterned blouse.

	5 min read

		Lakita Lowe: Leading Space Commercialization Innovations and Fostering STEM Engagement

		article

			1 day ago NASA’s Repository Supports Research of Commercial Astronaut Health

	2 min read

		NASA’s Repository Supports Research of Commercial Astronaut Health

		article

			2 days ago NASA astronaut Doug “Wheels” Wheelock and Axiom Space astronaut Peggy Whitson prepare for a test of full-scale mockups of spacesuits developed by Axiom Space and SpaceX’s Starship human landing system developed for NASA’s Artemis missions to the Moon.

	4 min read

		NASA Astronauts Practice Next Giant Leap for Artemis

		article

			1 week ago
 Highlights NASA Announces New System to Aid Disaster Response

	4 min read

		NASA Announces New System to Aid Disaster Response

		article

			4 hours ago Amendment 21: A.3 Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry: NSPIRES cover page issue and Delay of Proposal Due Date

	2 min read

		Amendment 21: A.3 Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry: NSPIRES cover page issue and Delay of Proposal Due Date

		article

			1 day ago 5 min read

		NASA Analysis Confirms a Year of Monthly Temperature Records

		article

			2 days ago
 Highlights The Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon

	17 min read

		The Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon

		article

			2 hours ago Mars Dunes

	5 min read

		NASA’s Perseverance Fords an Ancient River to Reach Science Target

		article

			9 hours ago Ed Stone, former director of JPL and project scientist for the Voyager mission, died on June 9, 2024. A friend, mentor, and colleague to many, he was known for his straightforward leadership and commitment to communicating with the public.

	5 min read

		Ed Stone, Former Director of JPL, Voyager Project Scientist, Dies

		article

			2 days ago
 Featured WL20 group of stars is located in the Rho Ophiuchi star-forming region

	5 min read

		NASA’s Webb Reveals Long-Studied Star Is Actually Twins

		article

			6 hours ago Artist's illustration of a star system near the Sun that is close enough to Earth for exoplanets in their habitable zones to be directly imaged using future telescopes.

	4 min read

		Coming in Hot — NASA’s Chandra Checks Habitability of Exoplanets

		article

			1 day ago Simulated Roman image full of synthetic galaxies

	6 min read

		NASA’s Roman Mission Gets Cosmic ‘Sneak Peek’ From Supercomputers

		article

			1 day ago
 Highlights Voyager 1 Returning Science Data From All Four Instruments

	2 min read

		Voyager 1 Returning Science Data From All Four Instruments

		article

			40 mins ago WL20 group of stars is located in the Rho Ophiuchi star-forming region

	5 min read

		NASA’s Webb Reveals Long-Studied Star Is Actually Twins

		article

			6 hours ago Research Programs

	1 min read

		Research Programs

		article

			6 hours ago
 Highlights Illustration showing several future aircraft concepts flying over a mid-sized city with a handful of skyscrapers.

	7 min read

		ARMD Solicitations

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			1 week ago Team “Rumble Ready” from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, comprised of (from left to right) Professor Mark Gonda, Nicole Xie, Junaid Bodla, Jordan Ragsac, Krishi Gajjar, Gerald McAllister III, and Leara Dominguez, took home first place at the 2024 Gateways to Blue Skies Forum held May 30-31 at NASA Ames Research Center. They are standing in a row posing for the photo; the team members are wearing blue t-shirts, black pants, and tennis shoes.

	4 min read

		Winners Announced in Gateways to Blue Skies Aeronautics Competition

		article

			1 week ago Graphic shows a possible future General Electric jet engine with exposed fan blades in front of a cut-away-interior view of its core mechanisms -- all part of NASA's HyTEC research project.

	4 min read

		NASA, Industry to Start Designing More Sustainable Jet Engine Core

		article

			4 weeks ago
 Highlights Simulated Roman image full of synthetic galaxies

	6 min read

		NASA’s Roman Mission Gets Cosmic ‘Sneak Peek’ From Supercomputers

		article

			1 day ago Ed Stone, former director of JPL and project scientist for the Voyager mission, died on June 9, 2024. A friend, mentor, and colleague to many, he was known for his straightforward leadership and commitment to communicating with the public.

	5 min read

		Ed Stone, Former Director of JPL, Voyager Project Scientist, Dies

		article

			2 days ago Astronaut-packaged cheese sandwiches

	2 min read

		Food Safety Program for Space Has Taken Over on Earth

		article

			3 days ago
 Featured A team from Iowa accepts its Artemis grand prize award during NASA’s Lunabotics competition on Friday, May 17, 2024, at the Center for Space Education near the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.

	5 min read

		Artemis Generation Shines During NASA’s 2024 Lunabotics Challenge

		article
			1 week ago
 Highlights Astronaut-packaged cheese sandwiches

	2 min read

		Food Safety Program for Space Has Taken Over on Earth

		article

			3 days ago Aerial view of the coastal launch range of Wallops Flight Facility, showing a blue Atlantic Ocean on the right; white buildings along a tan coastline back up to a green, marshy landscape

	1 min read

		NASA Wallops to Support Sounding Rocket Launch

		article

			3 days ago A woman with long dark hair, wearing a dark top, stands in front of the U.S. flag and a NASA logo on a beige wall.

	5 min read

		From Psychology to Space: Alexandra Whitmire’s Journey and Impact in NASA’s Human Research Program

		article

			2 days ago
 Highlights 2021 Astronaut Candidates Stand in Recognition

	6 min read

		Diez maneras en que los estudiantes pueden prepararse para ser astronautas

		article

			3 months ago Astronaut Marcos Berrios

	4 min read

		Astronauta de la NASA Marcos Berríos

		article

			3 months ago image of an experiment facility installed in the exterior of the space station

	8 min read

		Resultados científicos revolucionarios en la estación espacial de 2023

		article

			4 months ago


5 min read Katherine Johnson Biography


Margot Lee Shetterly Author of Hidden Figures
 **Born:** Aug. 26, 1918**Died**: Feb. 24, 2020**Hometown**: White Sulphur Springs, WV**Education:** B.S., Mathematics and French, West Virginia State College, 1937**Hired by NACA:** June 1953**Retired from NASA:** 1986**Actress Playing Role in Hidden Figures:** Taraji P. Henson  *Biography by Margot Lee**Shetterly* Being handpicked to be one of three black students to integrate West Virginia’s graduate schools is something that many people would consider one of their life’s most notable moments, but it’s just one of several breakthroughs that have marked Katherine Johnson’s long and remarkable life. Born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, in 1918, her intense curiosity and brilliance with numbers vaulted her ahead several grades in school. By 13, she was attending the high school on the campus of historically black West Virginia State College. At 18, she enrolled in the college itself, where she made quick work of the school’s math curriculum and found a mentor in math professor W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African American to earn a PhD in mathematics. She graduated with highest honors in 1937 and took a job teaching at a black public school in Virginia. More stories on Katherine Johnson
 When West Virginia decided to quietly integrate its graduate schools in 1939, West Virginia State’s president, Dr. John W. Davis, selected her and two men to be the first black students offered spots at the state’s flagship school, West Virginia University. She left her teaching job and enrolled in the graduate math program. At the end of the first session, however, she decided to leave school to start a family with her first husband, James Goble.  She returned to teaching when her three daughters got older, but it wasn’t until 1952 that a relative told her about open positions at the all-black West Area Computing section at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ (NACA’s) Langley laboratory, headed by fellow West Virginian Dorothy Vaughan. Katherine and her husband decided to move the family to Newport News, Virginia, to pursue the opportunity, and Katherine began work at Langley in the summer of 1953. Just two weeks into her tenure in the office, Dorothy Vaughan assigned her to a project in the Maneuver Loads Branch of the Flight Research Division, and Katherine’s temporary position soon became permanent. She spent the next four years analyzing data from flight tests and worked on the investigation of a plane crash caused by wake turbulence. As she was wrapping up this work her husband died of cancer in December 1956. The 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik changed history—and Johnson’s life. In 1957, she provided some of the math for the 1958 document Notes on Space Technology, a compendium of a series of 1958 lectures given by engineers in the Flight Research Division and the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division (PARD). Engineers from those groups formed the core of the Space Task Group, the NACA’s first official foray into space travel. Johnson, who had worked with many of them since coming to Langley, “came along with the program” as the NACA became NASA later that year. She did trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s May 1961 mission Freedom 7, America’s first human spaceflight. In 1960, she and engineer Ted Skopinski coauthored Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position, a report laying out the equations describing an orbital spaceflight in which the landing position of the spacecraft is specified. It was the first time a woman in the Flight Research Division had received credit as an author of a research report. In 1962, as NASA prepared for the orbital mission of John Glenn, Johnson was called upon to do the work that she would become most known for. The complexity of the orbital flight had required the construction of a worldwide communications network, linking tracking stations around the world to IBM computers in Washington, Cape Canaveral in Florida, and Bermuda. The computers had been programmed with the orbital equations that would control the trajectory of the capsule in Glenn’s Friendship 7 mission from liftoff to splashdown, but the astronauts were wary of putting their lives in the care of the electronic calculating machines, which were prone to hiccups and blackouts. As a part of the preflight checklist, Glenn asked engineers to “get the girl”—Johnson—to run the same numbers through the same equations that had been programmed into the computer, but by hand, on her desktop mechanical calculating machine.  “If she says they’re good,’” Katherine Johnson remembers the astronaut saying, “then I’m ready to go.” Glenn’s flight was a success, and marked a turning point in the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union in space. When asked to name her greatest contribution to space exploration, Johnson would talk about the calculations that helped synch Project Apollo’s Lunar Module with the lunar-orbiting Command and Service Module. She also worked on the Space Shuttle and the Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS, later renamed Landsat) and authored or coauthored 26 research reports. She retired in 1986, after 33 years at Langley. “I loved going to work every single day,” she said. In 2015, at age 97, Johnson added another extraordinary achievement to her long list: President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor. She died on Feb. 24, 2020. NASA Administrator James Bridenstine said, “Our NASA family is sad to learn the news that Katherine Johnson passed away this morning at 101 years old. She was an American hero and her pioneering legacy will never be forgotten.”


Discover More About the History of NASA
 Katherine Johnson: A NASA Trailblazer NASA History NASA History Office The History of NASA Langley Research Center




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 Page Last Updated:
								Nov 28, 2023
							Page Editor:
								Michele Ostovar
												Responsible NASA Official:
							Abigail Bowman