U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va, joined House and Senate leadership at a Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony Wednesday in the U.S. Capitol that honored West Virginian Katherine Johnson, Dr. Christina Darden, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and all of the women who contributed to the success of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) during the Space Race.
During the ceremony, Capito delivered remarks and presented a Congressional Gold Medal to Katherine Johnson’s daughters, Joylette and Katherine.
Capito has spearheaded efforts to honor the life and legacy of Katherine Johnson, including championing legislation to honor her, as well as her colleagues, with the Congressional Gold Medal. Additionally, she introduced legislation to rename the NASA IV&V Facility in Fairmont, W.Va. after Johnson and a resolution that honored Johnson’s life.
Born in 1918, Johnson’s intense curiosity and brilliance with numbers led her to a distinguished career spanning more than three decades with NASA and its predecessor agency the National Advisory Committee. for Aeronautics.
Among her professional accomplishments, Johnson calculated the trajectory for Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 mission in 1961. The following year, Johnson performed the work for which she would become best known, when she was asked to verify the results made by electronic computers to calculate the orbit for John Glenn’s Friendship 7 mission.
She went on to provide calculations for NASA missions throughout her career, including several Apollo missions.