Who Is Katherine Johnson?

What was one of Katherine Johnson's contributions to NASA?

• Designing rockets

• Calculating paths for spaceships

• Building satellites

• Training astronauts.

How did Katherine Johnson feel about going to school as a child?

• Indifferent

• Eager

• Uninterested

• Scared

What was NACA's focus in the early to mid-1950s?

• Studying the ocean

• Studying space

• Studying the human body

• Studying the environment

What role did Johnson take at NACA?

• Engineer

• Teacher

• Computer

• Scientist

In what year did NACA officially become NASA?

• 1958

• 1961

• 1969

• 1986

What did Katherine Johnson do after retiring from NASA?

• Became a chef

• Traveled and played bridge

• Started a new company

• Became a singer

What was the name of the astronaut whose flight path Johnson calculated to put the first American in space?

• John Glenn

• Alan Shepard

• Neil Armstrong

• Buzz Aldrin

Which of the following statements best describes the central idea of the text?

• Katherine Johnson overcame racial and gender discrimination and became one of the top mathematicians at NASA.

• Katherine Johnson wanted to work for NASA, but her status as an African American woman prevented her from doing so.

• Katherine Johnson was responsible for designing the first space probe sent to the Moon.

• Katherine Johnson had a difficult childhood, but after beginning work at NASA, she faced less discrimination.

How do the details about Johnson's early life in paragraphs 2-3 help us understand her later success?

• Her struggles in school show how much she developed during her early life before working for NASA.

• By describing her love of counting, the text shows that Johnson was always passionate about math.

• Johnson's enrollment in college at just 15 years old emphasizes how different she was from her peers.

• Johnson's early academic success made her later accomplishments seem less impressive in comparison.

What is the claim that the author makes in the text? Use text evidence to support your answer.