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NASA Remembers Katherine Johnson 1918 - 2020

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Katherine began working at the all-
black West Area Computing section
at the

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National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ (NACA’s) Langley laboratory in the summer of 1953.

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She did trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s May 1961 mission Freedom 7, America’s first human spaceflight.

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When NASA began to use electronic computer for their calculations, astronaut John Glenn said

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that he'd trust the computers only after Johnson personally checked the math.

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When asked to name her greatest contribution to space exploration, Katherine Johnson talked about the

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calculations that helped synch Project Apollo’s Lunar Lander with the moon orbiting Command and Service Module.

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She also worked on  the Space Shuttle and the Earth Resources Satellite and authored or coauthored 26 research reports.