West Area Computing Unit News Today

It's no secret that women can do just as much as men—especially in pursuits like science, art, governance, politics, and academic endeavors. And it's

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From the first female engineer being hired in 1939 all the way to the first-ever all-female spacewalk in 2019, women have been integral to advancing NASA.

Gino Blefari shares his thoughts on the trailblazing leader Mary W. Jackson, the first African American female engineer at NASA.

March 5, 2021 Before the age of electronic computers, humans who did complex mathematical calculations by hand were called computers. The movie “Hidden Figures,” based on a book of the same name, tells the story of three Black women who worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as human computers: Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson. They and their Black colleagues in the segregated West Area Computing Unit played an instrumental role in sending John Glenn...

Our weekly selection of links across the web. Scot McKnight Good morning! WASHINGTON (NewsNation Now) — NASA’s headquarters is getting a new name, and it honors the agency’s first Black female engineer Mary Jackson. Jackson “overcame the barriers of segregation and gender bias to become a professional aerospace engineer and leader in ensuring equal opportunities for future generations,” NASA said. She started out in the segregated West Area Computing Unit of NASA’s Langley Research ...

Feb 26, 2021 Video via NASA On Friday, NASA is broadcasting a special ceremony marking the renaming of the agency’s headquarters building in Washington D.C. in honor of the late Mary W. Jackson, whose historic work as a mathematician and aerospace engineer was documented in Margot Lee Shetterly’s book Jackson started her career with NASA in the segregated West Area Computing Unit of the Langley Research Center in Virginia before going on to lead programs that had far-reaching impacts on th...