Katherine Johnson
was a NASA mathematician who broke social and racial barriers. She died on the
24th February at the age of 101. She was an African-American woman
who had a key role in many NASA projects. She calculated rocket trajectories and Earth orbits for Nasa's early
space missions. Ms Johnson verified the
calculations made by new electronic computers before that flight. Ms Johnson had previously calculated the trajectory
for the space flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space. She also
played an important role in sending humans to the Moon. She was one of
the first women and especially black women to work for NASA.
