NASA's "Hidden Figures" awarded Congressional Gold Medals

Mary Jackson, NASA's first black female engineer, and NASA mathematicians Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan were posthumously awarded Congressional Gold Medals for their work on the U.S. space program.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who delivered opening remarks during the ceremony, described the women as "giants on whose shoulders all of those astronauts actually stood at a time … when our nation was divided by color and often by gender."

"These women dared to step into the fields where they had previously been unwelcomed. They excelled in science and math and made groundbreaking contributions in aeronautics. But these women didn't just crunch numbers and solve equations for the space program," Johnson said. "They actually laid the very foundation upon which our rockets launched and our astronauts flew and our nation soared."

"Although we call them, 'Hidden Figures,' we shouldn't think of them merely as supporting characters in the American story of space exploration," he continued. "They were the engineers and mathematicians who actually wrote the story itself."

Previously:
• In honor of Hidden Figures, meet the contemporary black women contributing to NASA's success
• Trailer: 'Hidden Figures' tells true story of black women at NASA who launched John Glenn into orbit
• Watch a young black female coder interview the stars of Hidden Figures

Pix from NASA: