NASA Christens Equipment After Katherine Johnson

NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) has officially renamed a West Virginia facility in honor of Katherine Johnson, an African-American mathematician whose work for NASA in the 1960s inspired the movie “Hidden Figures.”.

The center is now known as the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility. Staff at the Fairmont facility are responsible for making sure the software on NASA’s high-profile missions runs safely and successfully, the center’s website states.

According to Huffington post, Jim Bridenstine, NASA’s administrator, said the facility carries on Johnson’s legacy of “mission-critical computations.” “I am thrilled we are honoring Katherine Johnson in this way as she is a true American icon who overcame incredible obstacles and inspired so many,” Bridenstine said in a statement.

Johnson, one of NASA’s “human computers” whose calculations propelled NASA spacecraft to the stars, turned 100 on Aug. 26th 2018. She is a retired NASA Langley mathematician who was integral to developing human spaceflight in America. Johnson, who was played by Taraji P. Henson in the feature film “Hidden Figures,” (2016) began her career at NASA on a team of black women who were also referred to as “human computers.” Like the other women in this group, Johnson broke down barriers as an African-American woman, despite anti-black prejudice.

NASA honored Johnson on her birthday and reminded the world of her unparalleled contributions to human spaceflight. A number of women doing incredible work at NASA expressed how Johnson’s work inspired them along the way. “She opened the doors for the rest of us,” Julie Williams-Byrd, Langley’s acting chief technologist, said in a statement at NASA Langley.