When you buy through links in our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.
NASA is honoring a “hidden figure” and all the women who contributed to the Apollo program by naming a building in Houston after it. At the time of the moon missions, it was part of the Manned Spacecraft Center.
The agency’s Johnson Space Center (renamed for the president in 1973) celebrated the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission by dedicating one of its original buildings on Friday, July 19, as the “Dorothy Vaughan Center Honoring the Women of Apollo.”
The title recognizes one of the “human computers” whose calculations helped guide early American aeronautical research, while also drawing attention to all the women who were among the 400,000 people who landed the first Americans on the moon.
“On behalf of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, we are proud to host this historic event as the agency honors the significant contributions of women to the space industry, particularly pioneers who persevered through the many challenges of their time,” said Vanessa Wyche, Johnson Space Center’s third woman and first Black director. “As we prepare to return to the moon for long-term science and exploration, NASA’s Artemis missions will land the first woman and the first person of color.”
“It is a privilege to dedicate Johnson’s Building 12 to the innovative women who laid the foundation for our nation’s space program,” said Wyche.
Vaughan led the segregated West Area Computing unit, an all-black group of female mathematicians, at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory (now NASA’s Langley Research Center) in Hampton, Virginia.
In 1958, when the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was transferred to the newly created NASA, Vaughan and many of the West Computers joined the new Analysis and Computation Division (ACD), a racially and gender-integrated group in the field of electronic computing. Vaughan became an expert in Fortran programming.
Vaughan’s leadership helped improve NASA’s diverse workforce, particularly at Johnson, when human computers moved from Hampton to Houston, supporting Mission Control from Building 12. She was a champion for the human computers and for all those under her management.
Vaughan died in 2008 at the age of 98. Seven years later, she was portrayed by Academy Award-winning actress Octavia Spencer in the film “Hidden Figures,” based on the book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly.
(Mathematician Katherine Johnsonplayed by Taraji P. Henson, and engineer Mary Jackson, played by Janelle Monáe, were similarly honored as Vaughan with the naming of the Computational Research Facility at Langley in 2016 and the NASA Headquarters Building in Washington, D.C. in 2021, respectively.)
Although Vaughan did not work at Johnson, other women held key positions at the Texas home of manned space flight during the Apollo program.
Frances “Poppy” Northcutt, for example, began her career like Vaughan as a “computer” before becoming the first female engineer to work in Mission Control. Northcutt helped develop the trajectory that the Apollo 8 mission took to bring the first astronauts to fly to the moon back to Earth. She was also part of the team that devised the maneuvers needed to bring the crippled Apollo 13 spacecraft and its crew home safely.
Physiologist Rita Rapp, who arrived at the Manned Space Center in 1962, led the development of the Apollo food system — the way the astronauts’ meals would be packaged for the trip to the moon and back. She personally oversaw the preparation of each Apollo astronaut’s menu. Rapp died in 1989 at age 61.
Other women at the center worked as secretaries in the astronaut office, supporting the Apollo crew members. Antoinette “Toni” Zahn, Charlene Stroman, Jamye Coplin, Charlotte Maltese, Penny Study, and Martha Caballero were each assigned to eight to ten astronauts as the corps grew.
In addition to Houston and Langley, JoAnn Morgan was the first female engineer and the only woman on the Apollo launch team at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Nearby, in Kennedy’s Manned Spacecraft Operations Building (now the Neil A. Armstrong Operations & Checkout Building), biomedical engineer Judy Sullivan was responsible for monitoring the health of the Apollo 11 astronauts.
Dee O’Hara also served as the astronauts’ chief nurse and led the medical departments in Houston and at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California.
Margaret Hamilton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston led the development of the software for the Apollo spacecraft’s guidance and navigation system. And at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, Ethel Bauer helped calculate flight trajectories, while metallurgist Margaret Brennecke oversaw material selections for the construction of the Apollo-era Saturn V rocket.
Barbara “Bobbie” Johnson was the manager of mission requirements and evaluation for the Apollo program, the highest position a woman had ever held in her department. She was responsible for overseeing more than 100 (mostly male) engineers.
The Dorothy Vaughan Center in Honor of the Women of Apollo is one of the original permanent buildings at the Johnson Space Center, built in 1963. Today it serves as an administrative support building.
The 6,000-square-meter building was renovated in 2012 and equipped with energy-efficient features, such as a rooftop garden that not only provides a home for nesting birds and wildflowers, but has also helped reduce drinking water and energy consumption, provides better stormwater management and offers greater protection from UV rays.
To follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter via @collectSPACE. Copyright 2024 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.