How Poppy Northcutt cracked NASA’s boys’ club and became a feminist icon

While NASA was busy making history by getting men ever closer to the moon, a quieter revolution was taking place in its Mission Control’s Planning and Analysis room. There, in a sea of slide rules and Y chromosomes, sat Francis “Poppy” Northcutt, NASA’s first female Mission Control engineer. Starting in 1965, Northcutt conducted trajectory analysis for Apollo missions 8-17, from the first crewed mission to leave Earth’s orbit through the final moonwalk. Read More…