NASA commemorates moon landing by dedicating building to ‘Apollo women’

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NASA is honoring a ‘hidden figure’ and all the women who helped the Apollo program with the naming of a building in Houston, where it was part of the “Team” Spacecraft Center at the time of the lunar mission.

The agency’s Johnson Space Center (renamed for the president in 1973) marked the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission by dedicating one of its original buildings as the “Dorothy Vaughan Center in Honor of the Apollo Women” on Friday (July 19).

The title recognizes one of the “human computers” whose calculations helped guide early US aviation research, while also raising awareness of all the women who were among the workforce of 400,000 people behind it. the first Americans to land 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 women have made to the space industry, particularly the trailblazers who have succeeded against many a challenge for its time,” said Vanessa Wyche, Johnson Space. The 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 Building 12 to the innovative women who laid the foundation for our nation’s space program,” said Wyche.

Vaughan led the segregated “Western Area Computing” unit, an all-black group of female mathematicians, at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory (today NASA’s Langley Research Center) in Hampton, Virginia.

In 1958, when the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was transferred to the newly formed NASA, Vaughan and many of the West Computers joined the Analysis and Computing Division (ACD), a racially and gender-integrated group on the limit. of electronic computing. Vaughan became an expert Fortran programmer.

Vaughan’s leadership helped advance NASA’s diverse workforce, especially at Johnson, as human computers moved from Hampton to Houston, supporting Mission Control from Building 12. She was a champion for both the human computers and the individuals. all under her management.

Vaughan died in 2008 at the age of 98. Seven years later, Academy Award-winning actress Octavia Spencer portrayed her in the film “Hidden Figures,” based on Margot Lee Shetterly’s book of the same title.

(Mathematician Katherine Johnsonportrayed by Taraji P. Henson, and engineer Mary Jackson, played by Janelle Monáe, was given the same honor as Vaughan when the Computational Research Facility at Langley was named in 2016 and the NASA Headquarters building in Washington, DC in 2021, under rather.)

Although Vaughan did not work for Johnson, other women held prominent positions in the human spaceflight home in Texas during the Apollo program.

Frances “Poppy” Northcutt, for example, began her career as a Vaughan “computer” before becoming the first female engineer to work in Mission Control. Northcutt helped develop the trajectory that the Apollo 8 mission followed to return the first astronauts to fly back to Earth to the moon. She was also part of the team that devised the maneuvers necessary to bring the Apollo 13 spacecraft and its crew home safely.

Physiologist Rita Rapp, who arrived at the Manned Space Center in 1962, went on to lead the development of the Apollo food system—the way the astronauts’ meals were packaged for the trip to the moon and back. She personally supervised the preparation of each Apollo astronaut’s menu. Rapp died in 1989 at the age of 61.

Other women worked at the center as secretaries in the astronaut office, supporting Apollo crew members. Antoinette “Toni” Zahn, Charlene Stroman, Jamye Coplin, Charlotte Maltese, Penny Study, and Martha Caballero were each assigned eight to ten astronauts as the corps grew in size.

Outside of Houston and Langley, JoAnn Morgan was the first and only woman engineer on the Apollo launch team at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Nearby, at the Kennedy Manned Spacecraft Operations Building (today, the Neil A. Armstrong Operations & Checkout Building), biomedical engineer Judy Sullivan was in charge of monitoring the health of the Apollo 11 astronauts.

Similarly, Dee O’Hara served as the astronauts’ chief nurse, heading medical offices in Houston and at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California.

Margaret Hamilton at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston led the development of the software for the guidance and navigation system of the Apollo spacecraft. And at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, Ethel Bauer helped calculate flight paths and metallurgist Margaret Brennecke oversaw the selection of materials to build the Apollo-era Saturn V rocket.

Barbara “Bobbie” Johnson was the manager of Mission Requirements and Evaluation for the Apollo program, the highest position ever held by a woman in her department, which gave her the responsibility of managing more than 100 engineers (mostly men) .

The “Dorothy Vaughan Center in Honor of the Apollo Women” is one of the original permanent structures at Johnson Space Center built in 1963. Today it serves as an administrative support building.

The 65,000 sq ft (6,000 sq m) building was renovated in 2012 to incorporate energy-efficient features, including a rooftop garden that helped reduce potable water and energy as well as being a home for birds nests and wild flowers. use, providing better stormwater management and increased protection against UV rays.