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Who Was Mary W. Jackson?

On June 24, 2020, NASA announced the agency’s headquarters building in Washington, D.C., was to be named after Mary W. Jackson, the first African American female engineer at NASA.

Jackson’s story — along with those of her colleagues Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Christine Darden — was popularized with the release of the “Hidden Figures” movie, based on Margot Lee Shetterly’s book by the same name.

Today, as the accomplishments of these women are brought to light, we celebrate them as Modern Figures — hidden no longer. Despite their recent recognition, we cannot forget the challenges that women and BIPOC faced and continue to face in the STEM fields.

Background

Jackson showed talent for math and science at an early age. She was born in 1921 in Hampton, Virginia, and attended the all-Black George P. Phenix Training School where she graduated with honors. She graduated from Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in 1942 with a bachelor of science degree in both mathematics and physical sciences.

Jackson worked several jobs before arriving at the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA), the precursor organization to NASA. She was a teacher, a receptionist, and a bookkeeper — in addition to becoming a mother — before accepting a position with the NACA Langley Aeronautical Laboratory’s segregated West Area Computers in 1951, where her supervisor was Dorothy Vaughan.

Accomplishments 

After two years in West Computing, Jackson was offered a computing position to work in the 4-foot by 4-foot Supersonic Pressure Tunnel. She was also encouraged to enter a training program that would put her on track to become an engineer — however, she needed special permission from the City of Hampton to take classes in math and physics at then-segregated Hampton High School.

She completed the courses, earned the promotion, and in 1958 became NASA’s first African-American female engineer. That same year, she co-authored her first report, “Effects of Nose Angle and Mach Number on Transition on Cones at Supersonic Speeds.” By 1975, she had authored or co-authored 12 NACA and NASA technical publications — most focused on the behavior of the boundary layer of air around an airplane.

Legacy

Jackson eventually became frustrated with the lack of management opportunities for women in her field. In 1979, she left engineering to become NASA Langley’s Federal Women’s Program Manager to increase the hiring and promotion of NASA’s female mathematicians, engineers, and scientists.

Not only was she devoted to her career, Jackson was also committed to the advancement of her community. In the 1970s, she helped the students in the Hampton King Street Community Center build their own wind tunnel and run experiments. She and her husband Levi took in young professionals in need of guidance. She was also a Girl Scout troop leader for more than three decades.  

Jackson retired from Langley in 1985. Never accepting the status quo, she dedicated her life to breaking barriers for minorities in her field. Her legacy reminds us that inclusion and diversity are needed to live up to NASA’s core values of teamwork and excellence.

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During my book writing this NaNoWriMo, I came up with my own "humans are weird" concept!

You know, within a lot of stories, aliens are more advanced than us (technology). Have more senses than us (heat vision). Maybe have stronger senses than us (like hearing). But what if we have an advantage somewhere? Like maybe... We see more colors than they can?

In my book, one of my aliens cannot see the color red like the human can. I'd say she was "color blind", except this is just how all of her species see, so it's not a disability.

It's not as if she can't see red altogether, it just is a much duller color than what the human sees. Nearly brown. But it also happens to be the main color of her planet's environment.

This poses as a problem. See, her ship is red, and many of her outfits are red. These items are meant to blend in with the environment while moving across the planet.

A human visitor crashed on said planet, and our alien needs to go out to spy on then, see if they are friend or foe.

But the human, well, they sees her no matter where our alien protagonist moves. Incredibly well. Flying in over the mountains to come check on our human visitor? Human is already staring at the ship before it lands. Hiding behind a bush to observe the visitor? Human sees them immediately.

Once proper contact is made, our alien then asks about this. "Why were you always able to see me?" And the human seems confused.

"With all that bright red? I'd see you from a mile away!"

With proper research and observation, our alien comes to learn that the human sees basically a bright beacon against a dull background. But to our alien's eyes? It's all the same color.

I wonder how likely it would be for NASA to find another planet like ours that has CO2 emissions detected from Hubble. That would be evidence of civilization and people on another planet we could possibly make contact with. I wouldn’t be surprised if we sent over a little Hello package (sterile, of course, to prevent a fatal epidemic on their world or maybe we could send some chemicals that they could know).

When we get to that point, I know we’ll have that figured out. I just hope it’s within my lifetime. Humanity refuses to notice just how close we are to interplanetary travel and comminication. There are tens of millions of planets out there suitable for intelligent life. Will we ever get to meet them?

(via Voyager 2 is gathering science data again after recovering from a glitch in interstellar space | Space)

All five remaining instruments on NASA’s venerable Voyager 2 spacecraft are back to gathering science data after power overuse in late January interrupted the probe’s operations.

NASA made the announcement yesterday (March 3), over a month after the incident occurred. Troubleshooting for the spacecraft is a slow process because of its distance from Earth; it takes 17 hours for each command to reach the probe and for data indicating its efficacy to reach engineers.

Why is the final phase so difficult?Sorry if I sound dumb,I'm just curious.Also,what will be the rover's first task after landing?

Science in space

This week on NASA Explorers, we’re aboard the International Space Station!

Now that our scientists’ experiment has made it to space, it’s time to see how their samples behave in microgravity.

See how astronauts conduct science in space, while a team back here on Earth conducts their own piece of the project. Watch the episode here:

Follow NASA Explorers on Facebook to catch new episodes of season 4 every Wednesday!

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Arp 84, Slowdancers 

“Using nothing more than Newton’s laws of gravitation, we astronomers can confidently predict that several billion years from now, our home galaxy, the Milky Way, will merge with our neighboring galaxy Andromeda. Because the distances between the stars are so great compared to their sizes, few if any stars in either galaxy will actually collide.

Any life on the worlds of that far-off future should be safe, but they would be treated to an amazing, billion-year-long light show a dance of a half a trillion stars to music first heard on one little world by a man who had but one true friend.”

COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014) written by Ann Druyan and Steven Soter

Up for some virtual cloud watching? ☁️

What do you see in Jupiter’s hazy atmosphere?

Our NASA JunoCam mission captured this look at the planet’s thunderous northern region during the spacecraft’s close approach to the planet on Feb. 17, 2020.

Some notable features in this view are the long, thin bands that run through the center of the image from top to bottom. Juno has observed these long streaks since its first close pass by Jupiter in 2016.

Image Credits: Image data: NASA / JPL / SwRI / MSSS Image Processing: Citizen Scientist Eichstädt

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Crescent Mars