Apollo 10 Audio — Publicly Available Since 1970s

Museum Exhibit Reveals the NASA Langley Human Computers from "Hidden Figures"

Sam McDonald NASA Langley Research Center

A new display at the Hampton History Museum offers another view of African-American women whose mathematical skills helped the nation’s early space program soar.

“When the Computer Wore a Skirt: NASA’s Human Computers” opens to the public Saturday, Jan. 21, and focuses on three women — Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and Katherine Johnson — who were illuminated in Margot Lee Shetterly’s book “Hidden Figures” and the major motion picture of the same name. Located in the museum's 20th century gallery, it was created with support from the Hampton Convention and Visitor Bureau and assistance from NASA's Langley Research Center.

“Langley’s West Computers were helping America dominate aeronautics, space research, and computer technology, carving out a place for themselves as female mathematicians who were also black, black mathematicians who were also female,” Shetterly wrote.

The modestly sized exhibit is comprised of four panels with photos and text along with one display case containing artifacts, including a 1957 model Friden mechanical calculator. That piece of equipment represented state-of-the-art technology when then original human computers were crunching numbers. A three-minute video profiling Johnson —a Presidential Medal of Freedom winner — is also part of the exhibit.

A display case at left contains a 1957 Friden STW-10 mechanical calculator, the type used by NASA human computers including Katherine Johnson. "If you were doing complicated computations during that time, this is what you used," said Hampton History Museum Curator Allen Hoilman. The machine weighs 40 pounds.

Credits: NASA/David C. Bowman

Museum curator Allen Hoilman said his favorite artifact is a May 5, 1958 memo from Associate Director Floyd Thompson dissolving the West Area Computers Unit and reassigning its staff members to other jobs around the center.

“It meant that the segregated work environment was coming to an end,” Hoilman said. “That’s why this is a significant document. It’s one of the bookends.”

That document, along with several others, was loaned to the museum by Ann Vaughan Hammond, daughter of Dorothy Vaughan. Hoilman said family members of other human computers have been contacted about contributing artifacts as well.

Ann Vaughan Hammond worked hard to find meaningful items for the display. “She really had to do some digging through the family papers,” Hoilman said, explaining that the women who worked as human computers were typically humble about their contributions. They didn’t save many mementos.

“They never would have guessed they would be movie stars,” Hoilman said.

For more information on Katherine Johnson, click here.

Credits:

Sam McDonald NASA Langley Research Center

Celebrating 100 Years: A Storied Legacy, a Soaring Future

NASA.gov brings you the latest images, videos and news from America's space agency. Get the latest updates on NASA missions, watch NASA TV live, and learn about our quest to reveal the unknown and benefit all humankind.

We’re Turning 100! Celebrate With Us

Virginia Middle-Schooler Takes Grand Prize at NASA Langley Student Art Contest

Anna Fox, a seventh-grader from Virginia Beach Middle School in Virginia Beach, Virginia, was named as the grand prize winner of Langley Research Center’s Student Art Contest.

“I was very excited when I heard that I won first place for my grade,” Anna said. “But when I heard that I won grand prize, I was speechless.”

A record 831 entries were submitted from hundreds of children in 39 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, with 13 students earning first-place honors in grade levels K-12 and the opportunity to be considered for the grand prize, said Kristina Cors, Langley Student Art Contest coordinator.

“We hope this contest continues to grow and provide a place for students to explore science and technology through creativity,” she said.

“I was very excited when I heard that I won first place for my grade,” Anna Fox said. “But when I heard that I won grand prize, I was speechless.”

Credits: Courtesy of Anne Baker

The art contest theme, “The Next 100 Years,” was intended to illustrate how NASA research and innovation propels science to new discoveries.

“This year’s artwork was particularly remarkable, and represented the theme ‘The Next 100 Years’ with imagination and immense talent,” Cors said.

Anna’s winning piece shows a deep-space scene with an astronaut planting a flag on a planet’s mountain while watching a rocket fly off in the distance in a sky populated by stars, galaxies and a moon.

“When I started drawing, I had no idea what to do, so I had looked at a bunch of videos on how to do galaxies for inspiration,” Anna said. “After that I randomly placed colors together until I found something I liked. It all started coming together from there.”

Once she got an idea in motion, Anna did her work using old and new techniques.

“I created my artwork digitally on Photoshop,” Anna said. “I had started with basic colors for the background, including the explosion behind the rocks. Then, on another layer I created the rocks, planet, astronaut and rocket ship taking off. Later I added detail on all the layers to look more realistic. The last step was to add all of the stars and galaxies, which I did with a special brush.”

Anna, who has been an artist for as long as she could pick up a pencil, said she started drawing digitally when she was 11, inspired by her father’s work on a computer.

“I think the best part of creating art is having fun with it and inspiring others to do art as well,” she said.

Anna said she always had an interest in space and the art contest was a perfect vehicle to express that.

“I think that the coolest thing about NASA is that they help so many people achieve their dreams, and send people to do what not a lot of people get to do,” Anna said.

For her grand-prize victory, Anna received a certificate, and a NASA Exploration Package of posters, pens, stickers, patches and lapel pins. Her artwork will be displayed at the Virginia Air & Space Center in Hampton, Virginia.

The 13 grade-level winners were selected by a panel of five judges from the Hampton Roads art community, and the grand champion was picked by Langley employees. Each piece was evaluated on originality, interpretation of subject matter/theme, creative techniques, composition and overall art appearance.

Eric Gillard NASA Langley Research Center

NASA Langley researchers are experts in modeling and simulations for entry, descent and landing, working on missions since the Viking lander in 1976. In this episode, we explore the challenges of guiding landers like Mars InSight through the Martian atmosphere for a safe landing. 

NASA InSight launched on March 5, 2018.

For more, visit https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/

Why We Celebrate Search and Rescue Technologies on 4/06

Today (4/06), we celebrate the special radio frequency transmitted by emergency beacons to the international search and rescue network. 

This 406 MHz frequency, used only for search and rescue, can be “heard” by satellites hundreds of miles above the ground! The satellites then “forward” the location of the beacon back to Earth, helping first responders locate people in distress worldwide, whether from a plane crash, a boating accident or other emergencies.

Our Search and Rescue office, based out of our Goddard Space Flight Center, researches and develops emergency beacon technology, passing the technology to companies who manufacture the beacons, making them available to the public at retail stores. The beacons are designed for personal, maritime and aviation use.

The search and rescue network, Cospas-Sarsat, is an international program that ensures the compatibility of distress alert services with the needs of users. Its current space segment relies on instruments onboard low-Earth and geosynchronous orbiting satellites, hundreds to thousands of miles above us. 

Space instruments forward distress signals to the search and rescue ground segment, which is operated by partner organizations around the world! They manage specific regions of the ground network. For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operates the region containing the United States, which reaches across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as well as parts of Central and South America.

NOAA notifies organizations that coordinate search and rescue efforts of a 406 MHz distress beacon’s activation and location. Within the U.S., the U.S. Air Force responds to land-based emergencies and the U.S. Coast Guard responds to water-based emergencies. Local public service organizations like police and fire departments, as well as civilian volunteers, serve as first responders.

Here at NASA, we research, design and test search and rescue instruments and beacons to refine the existing network. Aeronautical beacon tests took place at our Langley Research Center in 2015. Using a 240-foot-high structure originally used to test Apollo spacecraft, our Search and Rescue team crashed three planes to test the survivability of these beacons, developing guidelines for manufacturers and installation into aircraft.

In the future, first responders will rely on a new constellation of search and rescue instruments on GPS systems on satellites in medium-Earth orbit, not hundreds, but THOUSANDS of miles overhead. These new instruments will enable the search and rescue network to locate a distress signal more quickly than the current system and achieve accuracy an order of magnitude better, from a half mile to approximately 300 feet. Our Search and Rescue office is developing second-generation 406 MHz beacons that make full use of this new system.

We will also incorporate these second-generation beacons into the Orion Crew Survival System. The Advanced Next-Generation Emergency Locator (ANGEL) beacons will be attached to astronaut life preservers. After splashdown, if the Orion crew exits the capsule due to an emergency, these beacons will make sure we know the exact location of floating astronauts! Our Johnson Space Center is testing this technology for used in future human spaceflight and exploration missions.

If you’re the owner of an emergency beacon, remember that beacon registration is free, easy and required by law. 

To register your beacon, visit: beaconregistration.noaa.gov

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Homeschool Day Brings STEM Activities to Virginia Air & Space Center

Jacob Earley, left, Frank Jones and his mother, Maria Jones, learned about the effects of gravity on other planets from NASA intern Jessica Hathaway during Homeschool Appreciation Day, which took place May 6 at the Virginia Air & Space Center (VASC) in Hampton, Virginia. Hathaway was one of several volunteers from NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton who taught homeschooled children and their parents interactive lessons about everything from ultraviolet radiation to engineering satellites to navigating a rover on Mars. Approximately 300 people registered for the event, which has a focus on activities involving science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The VASC is the official visitor center for NASA Langley.

Joe Atkinson NASA Langley Research Center

The NASA Aeronautics team is working to transform aviation by enabling a new commercial market for supersonic travel over land. The centerpiece of this effort is the X-59 QueSST (short for Quiet SuperSonic Technology), a new X-plane designed to produce sonic "thumps" that could open the door to new certification standards for commercial supersonic service. NASA and Lockheed Martin are working together to design and build the X-59. Beginning in 2023, NASA will use this X-plane to measure public response to sonic thumps. 

More at www.nasa.gov/lowboom

Neil Armstrong at the Lunar Landing Research Facility at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA

February 12, 1969 (5 months, 4 days before the launch of the Apollo 11 Spacecraft)

@nasa @nasahistory

Brothers Bring Curious Minds, Sharp Questions to Langley

One brother is a facts-and-figures guy, the other an adventurer.

They're both deeply fascinated by all things space.

Mikey and Robbie Rouse, 15 and 16, are from Salem, Virginia, and both have Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a progressive condition that affects nearly all their voluntary muscles.

On a recent trip to Hampton, Virginia, they visited one of the birthplaces of the American space program — NASA's Langley Research Center.

Mikey, the adventurer, wants to be the first wheelchair astronaut. "And I want to go to Mars," he said during his visit.

Robbie, the facts-and-figures guy, is always thinking of safety first — a quality held sacred by all at NASA.

The brothers' visit to Langley included a tour of the center's hangar, a stop at the Flight Mission Support Center for the ozone-monitoring Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III, and presentations on the Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator, autonomous technologies, and tests at the Landing and Impact Research Facility.

Deputy Center Director Clayton Turner and Associate Director Cathy Mangum presented Mikey and Robbie with commemorative coins and copies of "A Century at Langley," a pictoral history of the center.

No subject raised during the visit failed to spark the boys' curiosity.

Steve Velotas, associate director for intelligent flight systems, talked with Mikey and Robbie about the ways in which Langley researchers are studying autonmous technologies. Autonomous systems could be used in unmanned aerial vehicles, in-space assembly robots, or even wheelchairs to help those with disabilities navigate more easily.

"I don't trust robots completely," Mikey said.

"We don't either," said Velotas, who then explained that part of the reason Langley scientists are studying autonomous systems is to make sure they work like people want them to.

Evan Horowitz, structures and mechanical systems airworthiness engineer, showed the brothers Langley's historic hangar and talked about some of the past and present missions the facility has supported.

Gemini and Apollo astronauts trained in the hangar's Rendezvous Docking Simulator, and aircraft used for airborne science studies and autonomous flight research are based there.

Mikey and Robbie peppered Horowitz, who often takes tour groups through the hangar, with questions about air pollution and habitable exoplanets.

"This is great," said Horowitz. "Best interaction I've had in months."

The previous day, Mikey and Robbie visited the Virginia Air & Space Center, Langley's official visitors center.

The brothers live with their great-grandmother in Salem and receive daily assistance from a nonprofit called Lutheran Family Services of Virginia. The trip to Hampton was organized by Julie's Abundance Project, a program of Lutheran Family Services of Virginia.

Image Credits: NASA/David C. Bowman

Joe AtkinsonJoe Atkinson NASA Langley Research Center

Orion AA-2 Crew Module Painted for Flight

The Orion crew module for the Ascent Abort Test 2 (AA-2) was transported from NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, to the Joint Base Langley-Eustis Friday, Jan. 26, for a fresh coat of paint before final testing and shipment to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Specific flight test markings are being painted on the crew module to allow for attitude and trajectory data collection during launch. Next, it will be tested to determine the module's mass and weight, and also its center of gravity or balance, and then delivered to Johnson for integration and additional testing.

The crew module to be used for the test, fabricated at Langley, is a simplified representation designed to match the outer shape and approximate mass distribution of the Orion crew module that astronauts will fly in. During the test, planned for April 2019, the launch abort system will be activated during challenging ascent conditions at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Image credit: NASA/David C. Bowman