NASA’S SECRET NASA’S SECRET WEAPON In the fall of 1961 astronaut John the fall of 1961 astronaut John mission to orbit Earth One of mission to orbit Earth One of Glenn was preparing for his Glenn was preparing for his his preflight tasks was verifying where he would reenter Earth’s atmosphere and land This process required complicated mathematics Glenn needed a mathematician with special skills At the National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA the people who did this math were called human computers The work of human computers helped make The work of human computers helped make NASA astronaut John Glenn’s mission to orbit NASA astronaut John Glenn’s mission to orbit Earth successful Earth successful
Glenn told one of his supervisors Get the girl to do it The girl he was referring to was human computer PERSPECTIVES KATHERINE JOHNSON Katherine Johnson was born in White Sulphur Springs West Virginia in 1918 She remembered loving numbers as a child I counted the steps to the road the steps up to church Anything that could be counted I did White Sulphur Springs only allowed African Americans to go to school up the eighth grade Johnson’s father moved the family to a town 125 miles 200 km away where Johnson could attend high school After high school Johnson studied math at West Virginia State College Johnson taught public school and started a family before becoming a human computer in 1953 Katherine Johnson Glenn knew she was one of NASA’s top mathematical minds The United States was fighting the Soviet Union to be the best in the world A rivalry had emerged between the two countries after World War II 1939 1945 This rivalry was called the Cold War 1947 1991 The two superpowers were battling to outdo each other in every area That included
the new frontier of space exploration Astronauts were making history and becoming heroes in a competition known as the space race Behind the scenes people at NASA were working hard to make the United States the leader in the space race NASA managed the US space program Employees included engineers and scientists Mathematicians worked at NASA too Johnson was one of them THE NEED FOR COMPUTERS Glenn’s mission was important for science and technology The mission was perhaps even more important because of the space race The Soviet Union had already sent the first human into space earlier in the year Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited Earth once on April 12 1961 NASA sent astronaut Alan Shepard into space on May 5 but he did not orbit the planet That was Glenn’s mission Glenn needed to succeed
