Katherine Johnson, pictured here at NASA's Langley Research Center, where she worked as a computer and mathematician from 1953 to 1986. She later helped to develop the space shuttle program and Earth resources satellite, and she co-authored 26 research reports before retiring in 1986. She also proved invaluable on the Apollo 13 mission, providing backup procedures that helped ensure the crew's safe return after their craft malfunctioned. The next challenge was to send humans to the moon, and Johnson's calculations helped sync the Apollo 11 lunar lander with the moon-orbiting command and service module to get the astronauts back to Earth. "If she says they're good, then I'm ready to go," Glenn said. Before his Friendship 7 mission, astronaut John Glenn requested that Johnson personally recheck the calculations by hand. By this time, NASA had begun using electronic computers to perform these tasks, but the machines could be a little temperamental. She also confirmed the trajectory to send the first American into orbit around the Earth. Johnson was tasked with calculating the trajectory for Alan Shepard's historic flight, during which he became the first American to reach space. Subsequent orbital missions were more complicated, with more variables involving the position and rotation of the Earth, so Johnson used a celestial training device to perform her calculations. "You tell me when you want it and where you want it to land, and I'll do it backwards and tell you when to take off," Johnson said. So when NASA wanted the capsule to come down at a certain place, she was not deterred. For NASA's 1961 Mercury mission, she knew that the trajectory would be a parabola, a type of symmetrical curve. Johnson's passion was geometry, which was useful for calculating the trajectories of spacecraft. In 1958, NACA became NASA, and the Space Race began. Sending astronauts into space and to the moon
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