Langley creates a West Computing area and begins recruiting African American women mathematicians to support its wartime research effort.

Dorothy is hired as a mathematician at Langley and moves alone to Hampton, leaving her four children with their grandparents.

Dorothy's four children join her in Newport News after she leases her own apartment there.

The East Computing area closes, and Dorothy is named the first Black woman to head West Computing.

Mary Jackson joins West Computing and begins working as a computer under Dorothy Vaughan's supervision.

Katherine Coleman is hired at Langley, starts in West Computing, and is quickly transferred to the Flight Research Division.

Dorothy recognizes that electronic computers represent the future and urges the women she supervises to take technical training classes.

The Soviet Union successfully launches the Sputnik satellite, shocking the United States and igniting an urgent space race.

The NACA is reorganized into NASA and West Computing is officially closed, ending Dorothy's supervisory role there.

Mary petitions the city of Hampton for special permission to attend engineering classes at a whites-only high school.

Mary becomes NASA's first female African American engineer after completing the required coursework and training program.

Katherine is finally permitted to attend editorial meetings about the space program after repeatedly lobbying for access.

Katherine verifies John Glenn's orbital mission calculations by hand and confirms they match the electronic computer's results.

John Glenn's spacecraft successfully orbits Earth three times and returns safely in a nationally televised mission.

Katherine calculates the trajectory for the lunar module to decouple from and return to the orbiting command module.

During World War II, Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory created a segregated West Computing area and began recruiting African American women mathematicians to support its exploding research demands. Dorothy Vaughan was among the first hired, eventually rising to become the first Black woman to lead West Computing. Mary Jackson and Katherine Coleman followed, both moving out of West Computing and into specialized engineering groups where they distinguished themselves. The Soviet Union's Sputnik launch transformed the agency into NASA, closed West Computing, and accelerated the careers of all four women. Katherine's trajectory calculations directly supported John Glenn's historic orbital mission and the Apollo 11 Moon landing, while Mary broke her own barrier by becoming NASA's first female African American engineer. These women's contributions powered America's greatest technological achievement while remaining largely invisible to the public.

The headline story of four Black women mathematicians who helped win the space race.

Dorothy works all summer at the Camp Pickett laundry while awaiting a response to her Langley mathematics application.

Dorothy and the other West Computers take twice-weekly aerodynamics classes and regular hands-on training in Langley's wind tunnels.

The war ends and Langley undergoes only a small workforce reduction, as many women choose to remain in their positions.

Mary is assigned to work on the east side of campus and is humiliated when no colleague can tell her where the segregated bathroom is.

Mary vents her frustration to engineer Kaz Czarnecki, who responds by offering her a position on his wind tunnel team.

Dorothy argues to Katherine's Flight Research supervisor that he must either return Katherine to West Computing or promote her with a raise.

Mary and Kaz Czarnecki co-author a report on the effects of supersonic speeds on airflow over aircraft nose cones.

Christine Mann graduates as valedictorian of her high school class and enrolls at Hampton Institute for college.

Katherine meets James Johnson at her church choir and the two begin a relationship.

Katherine and James Johnson marry, and she begins using his last name professionally.

Katherine completes the first report ever published by a woman in her division, covering orbital spacecraft trajectories.

Christine is hired by NASA and later meets Katherine Johnson through their shared church congregation.

NASA films a documentary about the space program, capturing mostly white men on camera while women's contributions remain invisible.

The March on Washington takes place during the same year Dorothy celebrates 20 years of service at Langley.

Mary moves into the Federal Women's Program Manager role in Human Resources to advance opportunities for future women employees.

Before Dorothy's rise to prominence, she spent a summer doing laundry work at Camp Pickett while awaiting her Langley mathematics offer, and once hired, she and her colleagues undertook intensive aerodynamics training in classrooms and wind tunnels. As the war ended, many women stayed on rather than returning to domestic life, and when East Computing closed, Dorothy absorbed its work. Mary Jackson's path forward began with a humiliating bathroom incident that led by chance to a meeting with engineer Kaz Czarnecki, who became her mentor and collaborator. Katherine's career was shaped by personal loss and professional triumph, including a landmark published report and a second marriage that gave her the name history would remember. Christine Darden joined NASA in the late 1960s and quietly connected with Katherine through their church. Mary ultimately redirected her decades of hard-won experience into an HR role dedicated to ensuring that future women at NASA would not face the same invisible ceilings she had.

The supporting moments and personal milestones that shaped each woman's journey at Langley.

Katherine's college mentor at West Virginia State creates tailor-made advanced mathematics courses specifically for her, recognizing her exceptional talent.

Katherine drops out of her graduate mathematics program after discovering she is pregnant, setting aside her research aspirations.

Katherine's and Dorothy's families first meet when both their fathers work at the same Greenbrier resort in West Virginia.

Dorothy sees two competing job ads and applies for both a laundry position and a mathematics job at Langley.

Miriam Mann repeatedly removes the 'Colored Computers' sign from the Langley cafeteria until the day it is never replaced again.

Mary confronts division chief John Becker after he questions her calculations, proving that his original figures were wrong.

Katherine's husband is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and dies, leaving her a widowed single mother to three young daughters.

Katherine asks to attend an editorial meeting about space research and is told for the first time that women simply are not permitted.

Dorothy joins the new electronic computing center and learns FORTRAN in order to operate the mainframe computers replacing human ones.

President Kennedy announces to Congress the goal of landing an American on the Moon before the end of the decade.

Katherine tells an engineer she can calculate exactly where to launch a spacecraft to reach any desired landing point on Earth.

John Glenn refuses to fly his orbital mission until Katherine personally checks the electronic computer's trajectory calculations by hand.

Christine overhears that she will be laid off while a similarly qualified male colleague is promoted, then confronts her division head.

Christine is reassigned to sonic boom research and writes a landmark FORTRAN program for minimizing sonic boom, later earning her doctorate.

Katherine follows news of the Apollo 11 lunar orbit from a sorority retreat, knowing her calculations helped make the mission possible.

Long before any of the four women arrived at Langley, their paths were shaped by both extraordinary mentorship and systemic barriers — Katherine had a professor who invented classes just for her, yet had to abandon her graduate studies when she became pregnant. Dorothy's entire career began with a single decision to apply for two very different jobs on the same day, while the daily humiliation of a cafeteria sign reminded all the West Computers of the limits placed on them. Katherine lost her first husband to a brain tumor and rebuilt her life as a single mother while quietly pushing through unwritten rules that kept women out of key meetings. When John Glenn refused to trust a machine over Katherine's human judgment, it crystallized just how indispensable she had become. Christine's confrontation with her division head over a discriminatory layoff decision, and Dorothy's reinvention as an electronic computing expert, showed that these women never waited passively for opportunity but seized it, shaped it, and passed it forward.

The pivotal decisions, discoveries, and confrontations that changed each woman's trajectory.