She worked on the trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard's May 1961 mission Freedom 7, America's first human spaceflight. There, Johnson contributed to NACA's (which later became NASA) first forays into space travel. In 1953 Johnson took a job with the all-black West Area Computing section at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics' (NACA's) Langley laboratory, where she was assigned to a project in the Maneuver Loads Branch of the Flight Research Division. She enrolled in West Virginia University's graduate math program but left to start a family and later returned to teaching. In 1939, Johnson was selected as one of three black students to integrate West Virginia's graduate schools. After graduating with the highest honors, Johnson took a teaching job at a black public school in Virginia. At 13, she was attending the high school on the campus of the historically black West Virginia State College. Her clear mathematical aptitude placed her several grades ahead. Johnson was born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia in 1918. Katherine Johnson not only helped calculate the trajectories that took our Apollo astronauts to the Moon - she was champion for women and minorities in the space program and the world as a whole. Johnson is perhaps best known for helping NASA prepare for the orbital mission of John Glenn, but that was far from her only achievement or contribution to space exploration. The celebrated NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, who you may know from the book or film Hidden Figures, passed away today at the age of 101.
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