Agent Mike Johnson, Speaker of your house (5th from left) signs up with other members of Congress, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, “Hidden Figures” author Margot Lee Shetterly and family members of Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan and Christine Darden for the discussion of the “Hidden Figures” Congressional Gold Medals in Emancipation Hall at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (Image credit: U.S. Congress)
They might never ever totally shed the label, the females who worked for NASA as human computer systems throughout the area race are no longer “covert figures,” and they now have a medal to show it.
On Wednesday (Sept. 18), the ladies as a group and 4 people who have actually pertained to represent their cumulative experiences were granted the Congressional Gold Medal, among the greatest civilian honors in the United States. As licensed by Congress, the medals were bestowed to Christine Darden and posthumously to Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan.
A different Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal was likewise committed to all of the females who worked as mathematicians and engineers at NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) and NASA in between the 1930s and 1970s.
“These females didn't simply crunch numbers and resolve formulas,” stated Rep. Mike Johnson, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. “They really laid the really structure upon which our rockets introduced and our astronauts flew and our country skyrocketed.”
“So today, for all their contributions to the area program and to society, it is my excellent honor to award these females with a Congressional Gold Medal,” Johnson stated.
5 Congressional Gold Medals were bestowed to the ladies who worked as at NASA as mathematicians and engineers throughout the area race, consisting of Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan and Christine Darden, along with one medal for all of the unnamed covert figures. (Image credit: NASA)
Hosted by the Speaker, the event combined other agents and senators, NASA authorities and the households of Johnson, Jackson, Vaughan and Darden in Emancipation Hall at the Capitol in Washington. (Darden enjoyed live from her home in Connecticut.)
Related: Facts about NASA's genuine ‘Hidden Figures'
“The impressive things that NASA accomplishes which America accomplishes construct on the leaders who came before us, individuals like the females of Mercury and Gemini and Apollo,” stated Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator. “The females we honor today made it possible for earthlings to raise beyond the bounds of Earth.”
The honorees' contributions to the area program were very first advanced in the 2016 book “Hidden Figures” by Margot Lee Shetterly, which in turn influenced the function movie by the exact same title starring Taraji P. Henson, Janelle Monáe and Octavia Spencer as Johnson, Jackson and Vaughan.
In assistance of the work of the Space Task Group, Johnson determined trajectories for NASA's early human spaceflights, consisting of the suborbital launch of the very first American in area,
