African American NASA

Read the passage.

excerpt from You Should Meet: Katherine Johnson by Thea Feldman

Before she turned six, Katherine finally started school. Because she could already read, she skipped first grade. She would skip fifth grade too. In school, Katherine always had her hand in the air to ask questions. Her teachers encouraged her. Each night Katherine and her siblings did their homework seated around a big table. “After I finished mine, I’d help them with theirs!” she recalled.

Katherine grew up in a family that valued education.

Which detail from the passage best supports this inference?

• In school, Katherine always had her hand in the air to ask questions.

• Each night Katherine and her siblings did their homework seated around a big table.

• Because she could already read, she skipped first grade.

• Before she turned six, Katherine finally started school.

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Which statement is a main idea of You Should Meet Katherine Johnson?

• Katherine’s receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the age of 97 was the most important accomplishment in her long and impressive career.

• Katherine won the respect of others at NACA/NASA by working hard, demonstrating her abilities, and pushing to be included on projects and decisions.

• Katherine was hired to work on the space program mostly because she studied under W.W. Schieffelin Claytor when he was at West Virginia State College.

• Katherine’s father, who had just a sixth grade education, admired his daughter’s gift for math even if he could not fully understand it himself.

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Which statement is a main idea of "Katherine Johnson Biography"?

• Katherine first worked at a NACA laboratory in Virginia that was headed by Dorothy Vaughan, a fellow West Virginian.

• Katherine moved from White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, to Institute, West Virginia, to attend high school.

• Though she enjoyed taking classes in other subjects, including French, Katherine’s teachers at West Virginia State College convinced her to study math.

• Being selected as one of three African American students to integrate graduate schools in West Virginia was just one of Katherine’s many accomplishments.

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Which details from You Should Meet: Katherine Johnson best support the idea that Katherine won the respect of others at NACA/NASA by working hard, demonstrating her abilities, and pushing to be included on projects and decisions?

Select the two correct answers.

• Katherine was eventually invited to all briefing meetings.

• Katherine was the first woman in her division to have her name included on a report.

• Katherine and other African Americans at NACA/NASA had to work and eat separately at first due to their race.

• Katherine was hired just as the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union was beginning.

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Which sentences are most important to include in a summary of the events that occurred after Katherine began to work on John Glenn’s Friendship 7 mission?

Select the two correct answers.

• When an electronic computer calculated Friendship 7’s flight path, John Glenn insisted that Katherine check the machine’s calculations to be sure they were correct.

• NASA recognized Katherine’s mathematical abilities, which is why they assigned her to work on John Glenn’s mission in 1962.

• Only after Katherine confirmed the electronic computer’s calculations did John Glenn agree to go ahead with the mission.

• Like John Glenn, Katherine did not trust the work of the electronic computer and she spent almost two days checking its calculations.

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Read the passage.

excerpt from You Should Meet: Katherine Johnson by Thea Feldman

Katherine found it very exciting to be a student at West Virginia State College. There seemed to be countless classes she wanted to take! She especially loved French and thought she wanted to graduate with a degree in French, but she still loved math, too!Then one day she ran into Mrs. Lacey, a math teacher she knew from back home. Mrs. Lacey insisted that Katherine sign up for her class. Mrs. Lacey made Katherine realize she wanted to concentrate on her math skills and graduate with a degree in math.

Which text structure describes how the passage is organized?

• problem-and-solution

• order of importance

• chronological order

• compare-and-contrast

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Which response best explains how the authors of You Should Meet Katherine Johnson, “Katherine Johnson Biography,” and “Mathematician Katherine Johnson at Work” all view her being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015?

• All three writers view it as an honor that Katherine deserved due to her many achievements and accomplishments.

• All three writers consider it to be the federal government’s attempt to apologize to Katherine for the unfair treatment she faced in the 1950s.

• All three writers consider it to be the most important achievement in Katherine’s life.

• All three writers view it as a reward that Katherine should have received long before she did.

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Read the passage.

excerpt from "Katherine Johnson Biography" by Margo Lee Shetterly

In 1962, as NASA prepared for the orbital mission of John Glenn, Katherine Johnson was called upon to do the work that she would become most known for. The complexity of the orbital flight had required the construction of a worldwide communications network, linking tracking stations around the world to IBM computers in Washington, DC, Cape Canaveral, and Bermuda. The computers had been programmed with the orbital equations that would control the trajectory of the capsule in Glenn’s Friendship 7 mission, from blast off to splashdown, but the astronauts were wary of putting their lives in the care of the electronic calculating machines, which were prone to hiccups and blackouts.

Which point does the author of “Katherine Johnson Biography” make in this passage?

• In the early days of electronic computers, people sometimes trusted calculations done by other people more than they trusted those done by machines.

• The communications network that NASA built to ensure the success of John Glenn’s mission was based mostly on Katherine Johnson’s ideas and calculations.

• John Glenn, though a brave and skilled astronaut, was a superstitious person who had a very old-fashioned view of technology.

• Katherine Johnson’s work on John Glenn’s orbital mission led to the creation of a worldwide communications network.

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Read the passages.

excerpt from “Katherine Johnson Biography"

Just two weeks into Katherine’s tenure in the office, Dorothy Vaughan assigned her to a project in the Maneuver Loads Branch of the Flight Research Division, and Katherine’s temporary position soon became permanent. She spent the next four years analyzing data from flight test, and worked on the investigation of a plane crash caused by wake turbulence. As she was wrapping up this work her husband died of cancer in December 1956.

excerpt from “Mathematician Katherine Johnson at Work”

Johnson began her career in 1953 at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the agency that preceded NASA, one of a number of African-American women hired to work as "computers" in what was then their Guidance and Navigation Department, just as the NACA was beginning its work on space. Johnson became known for her training in geometry, her leadership, and her inquisitive nature; she was the only woman at the time to be pulled from the computing pool to work with engineers on other programs.

Based on the passages, which statement most completely describes Katherine’s early time at NACA?

• Katherine was curious and skilled in geometry, which helped her work as a “computer” in NACA’s Guidance and Navigation Department.

• Katherine’s husband passed away three years after she began working at NACA in the Maneuver Loads Branch of the Flight Research Division on a temporary basis.

• Katherine’s geometry skills and her analysis of flight test data impressed her bosses at NACA, and she became the sole woman “computer” to work with engineers on other programs.

• Katherine spent years studying flight test data and investigating a plane crash that occurred because of “wake turbulence.”

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Read the excerpt from “Katherine Johnson Biography.”

The computers had been programmed with the orbital equations that would control the trajectory of the capsule in Glenn’s Friendship 7 mission, from blast off to splashdown, but the astronauts were wary of putting their lives in the care of the electronic calculating machines, which were prone to hiccups and blackouts. As a part of the preflight checklist, Glenn asked engineers to “get the girl”—Katherine Johnson—to run the same numbers through the same equations that had been programmed into the computer, but by hand, on her desktop mechanical calculating machine.

What is most likely the meaning of wary?

• accepting

• cautious

• unwilling

• afraid

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