Photo: NASA
During pioneering mathematician Katherine Johnson’s 33-year career at NASA, she calculated historic flight trajectories for the first American to go into space, for the first American to orbit earth, as well as the flight path for the first human trip to the moon.
Now the 100-year-old will have another NASA building named in her honor. It’s the NASA IV & V facility in Fairmont, West Virginia, the same state that Johnson was born and raised in. According to NASA, “the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) Facility (is the) home of NASA’s IV&V Program. NASA IV&V assures the safety and success of software on NASA’s highest-profile missions.”
Johnson was first honored with a NASA building back in September of 2017 when the Langley Research Center opened the Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility in Hampton, Virginia.
Jill Upson, the executive director of the Herbert Henderson Office of Minority Affairs, said in a statement: “When I got the idea to honor Katherine Johnson in January 2017, after seeing the movie ‘Hidden Figures,’ I was pleasantly surprised by the overwhelming excitement that I was met with from people all throughout the state.”
Photo: NASA
Upson added: “Not only was helping to create Katherine Johnson Day a great accomplishment on behalf of this brilliant West Virginian, but renaming the NASA IV & V facility for her elevates her achievements in math and science to a national level. Dr. Johnson literally changed the world and she is worthy of this high honor.”