Meet Katherine Johnson, a brilliant mathematician whose amazing calculations helped launch the first U.S. astronauts into space! She graduated from high school when she was only 14 and from college at 18!

Katherine started working at National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), in a group of women who did super important math calculations. Her job was to figure out the paths that rockets should take to get to space and back safely.

She calculated everything from the best times to launch to emergency return paths for missions like Project Mercury and even Apollo 11, the mission that landed the first humans on the Moon! 

One of the coolest moments in her career was when astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, asked Katherine to personally check the computer’s calculations before his flight. He trusted her math more than the electronic computers!

Katherine Johnson didn’t just help astronauts reach the stars she also broke down barriers for African American women in science. Her incredible work showed the world that anyone, no matter their race or gender, could achieve great things in science and space exploration.