NASA Archives - My Daily Smile

Living (and loving) Life

Some of the most crucial (and most difficult) computations in the field of space travel are used to determine the trajectories and orbits of rockets and various types of space vehicles.

One simple mistake can cause a spacecraft to miss a planned rendezvous with another vehicle or even miss a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit and explore a comet or some other heavenly body that’s hurtling through space.

And in some situations a mistake in these calculations can even cost the crew members their lives.

Back when space pioneers like Alan Shepard and John Glenn were gearing up for their historic flights, they depended on an amazing lady named Katherine Johnson to calculate the trajectories and orbits of their crafts – and she made those calculations by hand!

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Living (and loving) Life

If you were around during the Space Shuttle era you probably remember watching the astronauts walk out of the hangar and make their way to the shuttle every time a new mission was preparing to blast off.

And you probably also noticed how they always entered the shuttle wearing orange spacesuits.

But then you probably noticed something interesting when they went on their space walks: they always wore white space suits instead of the orange ones they were wearing when they first boarded the shuttle.

Have you ever wondered why they didn’t just wear the same spacesuits all the time instead of always switching to the white ones before exiting the spacecraft for a space walk?

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Remembering Katherine Johnson: The ‘computer who wore a skirt’

Why the Space Shuttle crews switched from orange spacesuits to white ones after they got into space