Women In Cyber: The NASA Years

NASA is known as one of the greatest pioneers in the pursuit of knowledge in our modern era. Over and over, we hear about their success in the exploration of space and their advancements in the field of technology. The simple truth is that even the most innovative of companies still refused to acknowledge the accomplishments of women in these spaces for decades. It has often been the case that we learn about women's contributions to space decades after they have actually happened. To give some brief context, the NACA, predecessor to NASA, was founded in 1915. Seven years later they would hire their first female employee as a technical assistant. It would take another 50 years before they would begin training their first female astronaut. However, this was just the case for white women. NASA didn’t hire a women of color until 1943 and in 1992 Dr. Mae Jemison became the first African American woman to travel to space. From 1922 to today, women have been contributing to space exploration, in most cases without us even knowing. Let's take a look at just three of these such women. 

Margaret Hamilton  

Over the years you may have seen a popular picture of Margaret Hamilton cycle its way through the internet. The black and white photo features a young woman (Hamilton) standing next to a stack of calculations that matches her in height.  

These calculations were a part of the Apollo program which Hamilton worked on as a lead for the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory. NASA had partnered with this laboratory for work on the Apollo guidance system, a system that would help land man on the moon in 1969. Just three minutes before the landing, error codes began popping up on the lander's computer, obstructing important landing information and data readings. The error codes were the result of too many display requests being made at the same time by the astronauts. Luckily, Hamilton had come up with fail-safe solution years prior. Essentially, if the display was being overrun with pop-ups a priority display placed by Hamilton would take over. This way the astronauts could make a go/no go decision without overwhelming the system any further. Her innovative thinking ended up saving the landing and years later, in 2003, she would be recognized with the NASA Exceptional Space Act Award for this exact event. 

In 1972, after leaving NASA and MIT, Hamilton co-founded Higher Order Software which was based on her work with the fail-safes used during the Apollo mission. She found great success at the company, creating several tools that would be implemented by the government and even aiding in the development of structured programming language. In 1986 she left HOS to start her own company, Hamilton Technologies.  

Since her time at NASA Hamilton has been credited with coining the discipline of ‘software engineering’. She has gone on to win several prominent awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Augusta Ada Lovelace Award by the Association for Women in Computing. 

Valerie Thomas  

In 1961 Valarie Thomas attended Morgan State University to study physics. She was one of only two women in the entire program. Right after graduation, Thomas started her career at NASA as a data analyst with a focus on orbiting satellites, a position that, at the time, was uncommon for black women to hold. She quickly made her mark by helping to invent an image-processing system for said satellites. This image processing technology allowed NASA to observe crops from space and better understand certain resources and how they affected wheat growth. Shortly after, Thomas decided to continue experimenting with image systems. Except now she was interested in 3D images. In 1980 she received a patent for what she called an illusion transmitter. Using concave mirrors and a video recorder, Thomas was able to create illusions of a 3D image. This technology ended up being used heavily by NASA for future satellites. She continued to work for NASA through the 80s and 90s, earning the position of associate chief of the Space Science Data Operation Office before retiring.  

Thomas’s success at NASA was a huge step forward for space technology and an even bigger step for women. She worked on some of the most important projects in space travel including the Voyager spacecraft, Halley’s Comet and other satellite technology. Today she still advocates for black women in STEM and has continued to be a youth mentor in the Science Mathematics Aerospace Research and Tecnology Inc. 

Elizabeth Feinler 

Part of Elizabeth Feinler’s story takes place right here at Purdue University. After completing a B.S. degree from West Liberty University, Feinler did graduate work in chemistry at our very own Purdue. In the 70s, under a DoD contract, she pioneered and helped manage the first ARPENT, the predecessor to today’s internet. After its development, she moved on to become a part of the first group to develop and manage domain naming. This meant they oversaw the assignment of .com, .edu, .gov and .net. Feinler and her group also worked on some incredibly important servers including an audit and billing system for the DoD and some of the internet's first attempts at email servers. Her work with NASA started in 1989 when she was contracted to help expand networks to telescope sites at a couple of NASA research centers. Her previous work with domains actually led her to help NASA set up  www.nasa.gov which was brand new at the time. 

After working with NASA, Feinler went on to have a widely successful career working for various information centers and security agencies. At one point she even served as Delegate at Large for the White House Conference on Libraries and Information Centers. 

Even in retirement Feinler is still contributing to the world of computer science at the Computer History Museum. She has helped organize and present over 350 boxes of archives that detail the NIC and Engelbart projects. Her contributions to our field are vast and significant proving once again that the field of technology development and computer science is a place where women have been thriving for decades.