The Mere Fact That A Lot Of Women Found Out For The First Time That There Was A Woman In Mission Control

The mere fact that a lot of women found out for the first time that there was a woman in Mission Control was a very big deal. I thought it was important that people understand that women can do these jobs—going into science, going into technology.

Frances ‘Poppy’ Northcutt

Northcutt was the first woman engineer to work as a flight controller on the Apollo program. Her team designed the “return-to-Earth” trajectory of Apollo 8 and wrote the program used to compute the maneuvers to safely return Apollo 13. The sexism Northcutt faced as one of the few women engineers at NASA led her to become increasingly involved in the women’s liberation movement. As an activist and lawyer, she has advocated for women’s rights for fifty years.

Sources: Chasing the Moon (2019). Houston Oral History Project. Wikipedia.