In 1992, Mary V. Zeller, Ph.D., joined NASA to develop thin film sensors for aircraft and spacecraft. Zeller, a chemist, produced diamond films, oil-free turbomachinery, satellite lubrication, and helped establish a world-class research facility at NASA Glenn to study chemicals, metals, polymers, ceramics, and semiconductors with cutting-edge technologies such as optical, x-ray, and electron spectroscopy equipment.
The first Russian woman to go to the International Space Station
In 1960, the privately funded Women in Space Program had thirteen women, all experienced pilots, undergo the same medical testing as NASA conducted on the Mercury 7—the first American astronauts.
The only female engineer among 900 rocket scientists at North American Aviation in the early 1950s, she invented hydyne, the rocket fuel that successfully boosted America’s first satellite into orbit in 1958.
Dorothy M. Hoover was a pioneer in the field of aeronautical mathematics and physics. The granddaughter of enslaved people, she overcame the significant obstacles facing African American women in the Jim Crow era of the twentieth century to earn advanced degrees in mathematics and physics.
Harriett Jenkins did her part to diversify NASA as the assistant administrator for equal opportunity programs from 1974 to 1992.
In 1967, Christine Darden was added to the pool of ‘human computers’ who wrote complex programs and tediously crunched numbers for engineers at NASA’s Langley Research Center. But Darden wanted to do more than process the data — she wanted to create it.
In the mid-1950s, Kathleen Wicker received an assignment at work with one of the first electronic computers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
American aerospace engineer
American venture capitalist and social reformer