Nasa names HQ after its first black female engineer

NEW YORK: Nasa announced on Wednesday that it would name its Washington, DC, headquarters after Mary Jackson, the organisation’s first black female engineer. Jim Bridenstine, the administrator of Nasa, said the agency would continue to honour those whose histories have long been overlooked.
“Today, we proudly announce the Mary W Jackson Nasa Headquarters building,” Bridenstine said. Jackson began working at Nasa’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, in 1951. She went on to work with Nasa’s 4x4 supersonic pressure tunnel and became the agency’s first black female engineer in 1958. Her contributions, along with the work of Nasa mathematicians Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan, were highlighted in the film “Hidden Figures.”