WASHINGTON (AP) – NASA is naming its headquarters in Washington after the space agency’s first African American female engineer.
Mary Jackson started her NASA career as part of a segregated unit of female mathematicians at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
đ Welcome to the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building
Today, Administrator @JimBridenstine announced that weâre naming our headquarters building in Washington, DC after our first African-American female engineer: https://t.co/znX2jXklRh
â NASA (@NASA) June 25, 2020
The women did calculations during the early pre-computer days of the U.S. space program. Their story was recounted in a book and the 2016 film “Hidden Figures.”
Jackson was later promoted to engineer and retired from NASA in 1985. She died in 2005 at age 83. Â Part of the street in front of NASA headquarters is named “Hidden Figures Way.”
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