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Monday, February 17, 2003

Katherine G. Johnson is one of the pioneers of the American space program. She worked for NASA with tracking teams of orbital missions. She developed the first emergency navigation systems for astronauts by mapping exactly what stars they should be seeing at specific points in their missions.

The youngest of four children, Johnson was born in 1918 in West Virginia. Her parents traveled across the state to make sure the local segregation policy didn't prevent their children from receiving a good education. At the time, black and white children went to different local schools.

Johnson earned degrees in French and mathematics at West Virginia State College and graduated with highest honors.

After a brief career as a high school teacher in Virginia, she went to Langley Research Center and became part of a pool of mathematicians, which were segregated and consisted mostly of women. She later transferred to the NASA flight research program, where she contributed to the development of the space program.

With pencil and paper as tools, her work consisted of complex algebraic equations and calculating interplanetary trajectories. As the space race was heating up, there was a lot of pressure to get astronauts into space. If she was not accurate, it could make the difference between an astronaut coming back alive -- or not coming back at all. As a member of NASA's historic 1961 team, Johnson's calculations placed Alan Shepard, America's first astronaut, in space and right on target. She also charted the course for John Glenn in 1962, and for Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, in 1969.

-- By Dan Malerbo, Henry Buhl Jr. Planetarium & Observatory