NASA is honoring a 'hidden figure' and all of the women who contributed to the Apollo program with the naming of a building in Houston, where at the time of the moon missions it was part of the "Manned" Spacecraft Center.
The agency's Johnson Space Center (renamed for the president in 1973) marked the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission by dedicating one of its original buildings as the "Dorothy Vaughan Center in Honor of the Women of Apollo" on Friday (July 19).
The title recognizes one of the "human computers" whose calculations helped guide the United States' early aeronautics research, while raising awareness of all of the women who were among the 400,000-person workforce behind landing the first Americans on the moon.
