MIBSAAM AHMED ABDUL MOIZ SAIF ULLAH KHAN MAIN EVENTS On October 1, 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) replaces the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Langley Aeronautical Laboratory is now Langley Research Center, the new American agency's "epicenter." NASA establishes the Space Task Group at Langley Research Center (STG) in 1958. The STG was in charge of developing Project Mercury spacecraft as well as selecting and training astronauts to fly them. The STG was a sub-division of the larger Flight Research Division and was based at the Langley Research Center. Its members are mostly drawn from the Flight Research Division and PARD (Pilotless Aircraft Research Division). In 1958, Project Mercury came into development as the first human spaceflight program in the United States. The program ran from 1958 to 1963 and aimed to put a human in orbit around Earth. Its three objectives are to "orbit a manned spacecraft around the Earth, investigate man's ability to function in space, and safely recover both men and spacecraft." This is also the year that Virginia's public schools close. Under Brown vs. Board of Education, the state's governor chains shut the doors of CONTINUED…. any schools that attempt to integrate. Thirteen thousand students were sitting at home by the fall of 1958. Children of NASA employees attend segregated schools even as barriers are being removed. In 1959, NASA held a press conference to showcase the “Mercury Seven” astronauts to the world. Four out of the seven were selected, Alan Shepard, Scott Carpenter, Wally Scirra, and John Glenn. The workload of Project Mercury caused Katherine and some of her colleagues to come from the flight research department to the Space Task Group to calculate the trajectories of the capsule. She then worked with Ted Skopinski who was one of her colleagues as a math aide (human computer) and had proven herself to be as reliable with numbers as a Swiss timepiece and deft with higher level conceptual work. Katherine remarried James A. Johnson in August 1959 In September 1960, Katherine published a report “Determination of Azmiuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satelliate over a Selected Earth Position” which was the first report to come out of Langley’s Aerospace Mechanics Division by a female author. It is a road map that will help NASA meet its high goal of tipping the balance of the space race in favor of the United States ANALYSIS: Now the focus of NASA shifts from war based aircrafts to manned spaceflight in the year 1958 for which the Space Task group is created to initiate project mercury. Project Mercury was the name of the country’s first manned space program. While the whole country was in celebrations and proud about their country being the first to initiate the first manned spaceflight, the African American’s still had to deal with the repercussions in Virginia because of the Brown v. Board case in the form of segregation and closing down schools who attempted to integrate or comply with the decision of the Brown v. Board case. This highlights the situation of Virginia, where in one place the segregation barriers of NASA began to erode, but the schools were still segregated even to the point that white school boards paid “school fees” to the families of black children as an incentive to keep their children in the black district and avoid integration. It was at this point that sending a man to space was a more straightforward task compared to the integration of schools. NASA is now focused on getting a man into space more than ever and tries to outperform Russia at all costs who were off to a commanding lead with the launch of Sputnik. USA had to finish project mercury as soon as they could and to cope with the work load, they required more engineers, specifically to calculate the space craft’s trajectories. CONTINUED… Katherine opted to calculate the trajectories in the Space Task Group but couldn’t complete a report from Flight Research Group and although her branch chief Henry Pearson wasn’t supportive of female employee advancement, Katherine was given full credit for her report and was the first report to come out of STG by a female author. This implies that the barriers of patriarchy and segregation are slowly fading away and women especially African American women are starting to get recognized and being credited for their work. THEMES 1. SEGREGATION AND RACIAL DESCRIMINATION Segregation is a recurring theme throughout the novel as a barrier between blacks and whites. It is the primary limiting factor for the blacks as they have to work separately from their white counterparts regardless of their knowledge or education and they have to work twice as hard to signify their relevance. In this chapter, rather than black people getting affected by segregation, their children are. In 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States decided to desegregate public schools which is known as “Brown v.Board of Education” This decision declared that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional and that schools across the country were required to desegregate and provide equal educational opportunities to all students, regardless of race. In the wake of this, however, Harry Byrd, a former governor of Virginia, started a movement that aimed to resist the integration of public schools and shut down public schools which integrated. Following this, in the Fall of 1958, Virginia’s Governor Lindsay Almond chained the doors of the schools in localities that attempted to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision. Following this, some parents expressed reservations about sending their children to integrated schools. "I would rather have my children live in ignorance than have them go to school with Negroes," one white parent stated. CONTINUED… 2. Women's Empowerment and the Fall of Patriarchy: Since women started working at NACA in the 1930s, they were constantly judged not only by their race but by their gender as well because men were thought to be superior to women and they dominated women. Women's work and efforts were disregarded and they weren't given credit for it and they had to struggle to get a position that men could get easily without any struggle. This however changed when Doris Cohen a mathematician working at Langley, got credit for her research paper, and in 1958, Mary Jackson became the first African American female at NASA. In this chapter, Katherine Johnson and Ted Skopinski work at the Space Task Group but one of their reports from the Flight Research Group is missing so Ted tells their branch chief, Henry Pearson that "Katherine should finish the report" and "She's done most of the work anyway." The report was published in the September of 1960 and was the first report to come out of Langley's Aerospace Mechanics Division by a female author which was Katherine.