Everyone Should Meet Them: WOMEN OF SPACE
These four women represent different generations of space science, from paper calculations to digital systems and the exploration of other planets.
Katherine Johnson: A key mathematician at NASA, she calculated orbital trajectories for historic missions. At a time when computers were still limited, her hand calculations were so reliable that astronauts asked to check the results before launch.
Margaret Hamilton: She led the development of software for the Apollo program. Their work allowed the onboard computer to prioritize tasks during the Apollo 11 lunar landing, avoiding potential failure. It also helped lay the foundations for modern software development.
Diana Trujillo: A Colombian aerospace engineer who participated in the Perseverance rover mission to Mars, where she led the team responsible for the vehicle's robotic arms, a critical system for collecting and analyzing high-precision Martian rock samples. She also led the first Spanish-language broadcast of the Mars landing.
Christina Koch: The NASA astronaut holds the record for the longest continuous stay in space by a woman, at 328 days. She participated in the first all-female spacewalk. And recently, she became the woman who has been farthest from Earth.