Her calculations proved critical to the success of the Apollo Moon landings and the start of the Space Shuttle.
By this time NASA had begun using electronic computers to perform these tasks, but the machines could be a little temperamental. Katherine was tasked with calculating the trajectory for sending the first American into space, and then the first American into orbit around the Earth. She and women like her worked unseen for. Katherine continued to work at NASA until 1986. In 1958, the NACA became NASA and the space race began. She calculated the flight path for Apollo 11's moon landing six years later, and also worked on emergency procedures used to bring the illfated Apollo 13 safely home in April of 1970. Katherine Johnson, a mathematician for NASA and its predecessor agency, passed away on 24 February at age 101. He refused to fly unless Johnson corroborated the computer's work, which she did.
Her Flight Research Division worked closely with an engineering group called the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division (PARD), which specialized in rocketry. The Space Task Force and Manned Space Travel History began playing out right in front of NASA’s Katherine Johnson. She calculated the trajectory for America's first trip to space.
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She calculated the trajectory and launch windows for astronaut Alan Shepard's first flight in May of 1961, when he became the first man in space, and astronaut John Glenn insisted that Johnson verify the first machine-generated, electronic computer calculations for his Friendship 7 mission in February of 1962, making him the first American to orbit Earth. Katherine’s work had made a powerful and direct impact on the real world. Katherine Johnson was a mathematician at NASA and her work helped send astronauts to the Moon. Among Johnson's most visible contributions to the space program were calculating the elegantly successful trajectories accomplished by the first space flights, and for verifying the first electronically computed flight plans. She assisted with five more Apollo flights that also made it to the moon, coauthored more reports, including one that calculated flight trajectories to Mars.
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