Can you read 'not too fast' please (teen learners - A2/B1 top), please?
As a girl growing up in rural West Virginia, Katherine Johnson loved to count. She counted everything: the steps between her house and the road, the number of dishes she’d washed…etc.
This African-American little girl started high school by the time she was 10. By 18, she’d finished college, where she excelled as a math major.
She was, by all accounts, brilliant.
She helped the United States win the space race, a geopolitical competition that peaked with the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. Despite the stereotypes she suffered from because of her race and gender, Katherine Johnson managed to work for the Flight Research Division. She and her colleagues helped NASA meet the challenge posed by the Soviets with the 1957 launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite, followed by the 1961 orbital flight of Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space.
After circling the Earth three times, the astronaut John Glenn safely splashed down—but he did not want to even begin his journey until Johnson had verified the calculations.
In 1969, Johnson helped send Apollo 11 to the moon, which is the mission she’s most proud of.
Johnson retired from NASA in 1986. In 2015, President Obama awarded 97-year-old Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
