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This week is the 80th anniversary of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which began not as a NASA center, but as a test-bed for some of the earliest rocket experiements. JPL's evolution into the premier NASA center for robotic exploration of the solar system is a fascinating one. And perhaps one of the most interesting yet lesser-known stories is about a team of talented women known as the "human computers." These women not only performed hundreds of thousands of mathematical calculations crucial to the U.S. space program, but also became some of the first computer programmers at NASA.
In our latest Teachable Moment, JPL senior education specialist Ota Lutz explains how human computers contributed to the success of our earliest missions to the moon, Mars and beyond, and paved the way not only for space exploration, but also future generations.
Learn more about this fascinating piece of NASA history and find out how you can share it with students as a standards-aligned algebra II lesson in calculating launch windows.
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