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“It’s well-known rocket science now.On Sunday, the trailer for Hidden Figures - the story of the black female mathematicians who helped make NASA what it is today - was released. Thanks to Johnson's pioneering math, spaceflight is now routine.
#Katherine johnson nasa calculations how to
“So much of what she did is buried in the mathematical DNA of how to do spaceflight,” says Barry. Barry credits her work, in part, for enabling current ventures such as commercial rocket companies like SpaceX. Today, it’s a cliché that “space is hard.” But in Johnson’s time, it wasn’t just hard-up until then, it had seemed impossible Johnson helped make it possible. But also as a female, I can do something I enjoy and that I’m good at.”
“It’s not just her contributions to trajectory design, which is a big part of what I do technically. “Katherine Johnson made it possible for me to do what I do today,” she continues. “All the computer models we use will have been based on that stuff.
#Katherine johnson nasa calculations software
“It’s absolutely foundational in any trajectory software or modeling we do now,” says Gruber. The trajectory planning math of the Apollo years, although simple compared with today’s missions, provides a framework for NASA’s current and future spacefaring plans. “I think she’d get a kick out of analyzing it,” she says. Yet while these complicated trajectories are no longer calculable by hand, they rely on the same geometry concepts that Johnson used in the ’60s. “I call it ‘the potato chip,’” notes Gruber. To get there, as the spacecraft nears the moon, it will take a curious wavy trajectory called a near-rectilinear halo orbit. “Getting to the lunar South Pole is a much trickier trajectory problem,” says Gruber. The Apollo missions went to lower latitudes, closer to the lunar equator-a much more direct path from Earth. The team plans to send the astronauts to the south lunar pole, where orbiters have discovered the existence of water in the form of ice. Thanks to faster computers, the Artemis team can now design more complex trajectories through space to more interesting locations on the moon. “We can evaluate a lot more options a lot more quickly,” says Gruber. Today, NASA scientists eschew hand calculations almost entirely, relying on computers for fast, consistent performance. He safely reentered Earth’s atmosphere and landed about 40 miles away from Johnson’s calculated target in the Atlantic Ocean-remarkably close, considering that his spacecraft was moving up to 5 miles per second. Gruber’s basic task remains essentially the same as Johnson’s was in 1962: to calculate the speed, acceleration, and direction required to lob a spacecraft of certain size and fuel capacity to hit a moving target, without a lot of room for extra maneuvering.įollowing her confirmation of the computer’s numbers, Glenn would orbit the planet three times.
Gruber plans trajectories for Artemis, just as Johnson did for the first lunar landing. “She had a big contribution to trajectory design in general,” says NASA aerospace engineer Jenny Gruber.Īt NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Gruber works on the Artemis mission, which plans to send the first woman and the next man to the moon in 2024. Her work forms part of the mathematical foundation of NASA’s missions today.
#Katherine johnson nasa calculations movie
But Johnson’s contributions to spaceflight extend beyond such historic moments, several of which are dramatized in the 2016 movie Hidden Figures. The retired NASA mathematician, who died Monday at the age of 101, calculated the trajectories of the agency’s first space missions, including John Glenn’s 1962 spaceflight in which he became the first American to orbit the planet, and the first moon landing in 1969. Her math continues to carve out new paths for spacecraft navigating our solar system, as NASA engineers use evolved versions of her equations that will execute missions to the moon and beyond. Katherine Johnson blazed trails, not just as a black female mathematician during the Cold War, but by mapping literal paths through outer space.
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