Katherine Johnson was born in West Virginia on August 26, 1918 (Houston, 2019, 325). Houston (2019) tells us that Johnson was very curious about knowing details of everyday things, she observed and would always count things. In 1939 Dr. John W. Davis selected Katherine Johnson along with 2 black men to be the first to integrate West Virginia University graduate program (NASA, 2020). Although Johnson chose not to complete her graduate program in 1953 she was given the opportunity to work at Langley (NASA, 2020). During her career at Langley Katherine was considered a human computer and helped with trajectory analysis, Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position, and many other calculations that helped with airplanes and space flight (Houston, 2019, 326). In 1962 "As a part of the preflight checklist, Glenn asked engineers to "get the girl" Johnson to run the same numbers through the same equations that had been programmed into the computer, but by hand, on her desktop mechanical calculating machine. "If she says they're good,"Katherine Johnson remembers the astronaut saying, "then I'm ready to go" (NASA, 2020)." " The video below is a scene from the movie hidden figures and is a depiction of this event. Watch it until 1:11

When Katherine Johnson was asked what she believed her greatest contribution to space exploration was she said, "the calculations that helped synch Project Apollo's Lunar Module with the lunar-orbiting Command and Service Module (NASA, 2020)." Katherine Johnson also often calculated the trajectory of flights and landings. We do not have the time to go over the math she used to calculate that trajectory of space crafts, but we can look at calculating trajectory of things on earth. Trajectory is the path that a projectile object follows (Ling et al., 2016). For the sake of simplicity, we will discuss trajectory in 2 dimensions and assume there is no air resistance or friction. Before we explore more about trajectory play with this applet and see what you notice.

This video will introduce you to all the equations you will use to calculate trajectory and also walk you through a problem.