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African-American women working behind the scenes as “human computers” were vital to the Space Race

In the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I want to dedicate this post to a Black leader whose contributions changed our country, our world and really, our entire universe: Katherine Johnson.

NASA is eyeing the late 2030s for sending humans to Mars and it could use a nuclear-powered rocket that would dramatically reduce the seven-month journey for those spacefaring heroes.

Katherine Johnson, née Katherine Coleman, also known as (1939–56) Katherine Goble, (born August 26, 1918, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, U.S.—died February 24, 2020, Newport News, Virginia), American mathematician who calculated and analyzed the flight paths of many spacecraft during her more than three decades with the U.S. space program. Her work helped send astronauts to the Moon. Coleman’s intelligence and skill with numbers became apparent when she was a child; by the time she was 10 years old, she had started attending high school. In 1937, at age 18, Coleman graduated wi...

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