Making History: The Women Who Shaped Space Exploration
Written By Katie Johnson, WIN Staff
From the news to social media, it is unlikely that you haven’t heard about the first ever all-female spacewalk last Friday. However, did you hear the mission was pushed back nearly six months because NASA lacked adequately sized spacesuits for women? This logistical detail highlights an implicit bias within the space industry, an industry built with men in mind in the 1970s. This outdated thinking has historically been limiting for women. Out of 565 people that have been to space, only 59 have been women. Fortunately, with more female astronauts than ever before, NASA is being forced to adapt and grow to meet the needs of a more diverse group of astronauts.
In honor of Jessica Meir and Christina Koch’s groundbreaking first all-female spacewalk last week, in which they became the 14th and 15th women in history to complete a spacewalk, this week’s WIN Blog honors some of the most significant, but mostly unknown, women of NASA. Here are six female explorers, scientists, engineers and astronauts who forged the way for extraordinary women like Meir and Koch.
Katherine Johnson
Mathematician, joined NASA at its creation in 1958
Instrumental in: Trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s May 1961 mission Freedom 7 and John Glenn’s 1962 orbital mission; featured in the recent film “Hidden Figures.”
Born in the era of Jim Crow segregation, Katherine Johnson demonstrated a rare talent for math at school and was encouraged by her father to go to college. She said in a TV interview in 2011, “I didn’t know what a college was.” After graduating with highest honors in 1937, Johnson joined other African American “human computers” and became a crucial piece of the space program. In 1960, she was the first woman to receive credit as an author of a research project. She later did trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s May 1961 mission Freedom 7 and John Glenn’s orbital mission. Johnson’s analysis was crucial to these pioneering missions, in particular the synching of the lunar lander with the command and service module.
In 2015, at the age of 97, Katherine Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama.
JoAnn Morgan
Engineer, joined NASA the year it was founded in 1958
Instrumental in: Was the only female engineer in the firing room of the launch of Apollo 11 in July 1969
JoAnn Morgan, a trailblazer aerospace engineer, was the first female engineer at NASA and the first female senior executive at the Kennedy Space Center. Morgan was the only female engineer in the firing room during the launch of Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969. Morgan said she endured obscene phone calls, lewd comments in the elevator, and even had to leave her building where she worked to find a women’s bathroom.
Morgan faced a series of challenges but luckily had the support of her supervisor, Jim White. When she was hired on, Mr. White called everyone on the team to a meeting, except JoAnn. The NASA website recounts, he explained to the crew: “This is a young lady who wants to be an engineer. You’re to treat her like an engineer. But she’s not your buddy. You call her Ms Hardin. You’re not to be familiar.” “‘Well, can we ask her to make coffee?’ someone asked.
“‘No,’ White said. ‘You don’t ask an engineer to make coffee.’”
Morgan would go in for an overnight shift ahead of launches, making way for a male colleague a few hours before. But when it came to the launch of Apollo 11, she got her big break as an instrumentation controller. She told the Associated Press: “I was there. I wasn’t going anywhere. I had a real passion for it. Finally, 99% of them accepted that ‘JoAnn’s here and we’re stuck with her.’”
Margaret Hamilton
Computer Scientist, joined NASA in 1964
Instrumental in: Lead programmer for Apollo missions
Margaret Hamilton is considered the mother of software engineering. She was one of the world’s first computer software programmers. She was the lead programmer and helped write the computer code for the command and lunar modules used on the Apollo missions to the Moon in the late 1960s and early ‘70s. At the time, programmers had to use paper punch cards to feed information into room-sized computers with no screen interface. The Apollo guidance computer also had less capacity than today’s mobile phones!
“Apollo gave us the opportunity to make every kind of error that one could ever imagine,” she said—even improbable ones like Jim Lovell accidentally entering the wrong command on Apollo 8 and resetting the computer to its pre-launch configuration when the astronauts were coming back from the moon. Hamilton helped save the day after that particular goof. By chance, her four-year-old daughter had done the same thing in a simulator, so Hamilton knew what to do when it happened during a real flight.
Frances Poppy Northcutt
Engineer, joined NASA in 1965
Instrumental in: first female engineer to work in NASA’s Mission Control during Apollo 8
Frances Poppy Northcutt studied maths at the University of Texas because she believed it would help her get a “man’s job.” After graduation, she joined TRW Systems, a contractor with NASA on the Apollo program as a computeress. When she had her first performance evaluation after six months, her supervisor wanted to promote her to technical staff, now known as an engineer.
Northcutt was the first woman to work as technical staff. The pay difference between a computeress and technical staff was so large, TRW Systems did not have a structure in place in order to approve such a promotion and had to give her a pay raise in slow increments.
“I felt a lot of pressure because I was the only woman,” she told PBS. “I started looking around at these dudes that were working with me and I thought, ‘You know, I’m as smart as they are.’” Northcutt worked alongside male colleagues to plan the trajectory for Apollo 8 to return to Earth, was involved in Apollo 11, as well as the struggle to bring Apollo 13 home after it was in trouble.
After her time with NASA, Northcutt helped pass a law that prohibited hospitals from charging women who came in for rape kits. She helped dramatically increase the number of women that were on appointed boards and commissions and later one became President of both the Houston and Texas chapter for the National Organization of Women.
Jamye Flowers Coplin
Crew Secretary, joined NASA in 1966
Instrumental in: Worked directly with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to ensure full preparation for their space missions
Less known than the other women on this list, Jamye Flowers Coplin, just nineteen when she joined NASA, was responsible for making sure that Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins were prepared and in the right frame of mind in order to make history on the moon.
Coplin joined NASA right out of high school. In 1966, she became one of Apollo 11’s crew secretaries, a position that required a troubleshooting all-rounder willing to work long hours. It was her first job and she had no idea she would be working directly with the astronauts that would eventually be the first to walk the moon.
According to the Smithsonian Institution’s Air & Space magazine, “Coplin wrote their frequent travel orders, ran interference when outsiders wanted access, traveled with them to the Cape for launches, kept their wives informed, and even babysat their children. When changes were made to the flight checklist, she had enough technical knowledge to see that they were made correctly.”
Sally Kristen Ride
Astronaut, joined NASA in 1978
Instrumental in: Was the first American woman to go into space
With all the advancements being made in NASA, it was only a matter of time before women were to get out of the control room and in to space. In 1983, Sally Kristen Ride became the first American woman in space. An American astronaut and physicist from Los Angeles, she saw an advertisement in Stanford's newspaper (her alma mater) for astronauts at NASA. In 1978, the first year NASA accepted female applicants, she was one of 35 (and only 1 of 6 females) selected out of over 8,000 applicants for that year’s class.
Ride was the third woman in space overall, after two USSR cosmonauts. The first woman in space was Valentina Tereshkova, who flew to space on a solo mission in 1963. Another female trip would not occur for 20 more years.
Sally Ride remains the youngest American astronaut to have traveled to space, having done so at the age of 32. Prior to her first space flight, she was subjected to media attention due to her gender. During a press conference, she was asked questions such as, “Will the flight affect your reproductive organs?” and “Do you weep when things go wrong at the job?”
Despite the historical significance of the mission, Ride insisted she only saw herself in one way - as an astronaut.
In Conclusion:
Jessica Meir and Christina Koch were both part of NASA’s 2013 class of astronaut trainees, the first to include equal numbers of men and women. There are now 12 female astronauts in NASA’s ranks of 38, a stark difference from Ride’s class. Koch is also on track to break the record for the longest single spaceflight by woman, with an expected 328 days in space if she returns to Earth in February as scheduled.
In an interview with NASA TV earlier this month Koch was asked if she was bothered that her accomplishments were often talked about in terms of her gender, or whether she believed it was important to mark milestones. “That is something I’ve done a lot of thinking and reflecting on,” she said. “And in the end, I do think it’s important... because of the historical nature of what we’re doing and [because] in the past women haven’t always been at the table.”