Katherine Johnson held lives in her equations - zero margin for mistake. Born in 1918 in segregated West Virginia, she outran every barrier placed in her path. By age 15 she was already in college, devouring mathematics while the world tried to limit what Black women could dream. At NACA (later NASA), she became a "human computer," plotting trajectories by hand in an era when electronic machines were distrusted and doors stayed locked for people who looked like her. Yet when the stakes were orbital and then lunar, her precision became non-negotiable. John Glenn, first American to orbit Earth in 1962, refused to strap in until Katherine Johnson double-checked the new IBM computer's numbers herself. His words? “If she says they’re good, I’m ready to go.” Her calculations cleared the way for: > Alan Shepard’s first American spaceflight > John Glenn’s historic orbit >Apollo 11’s moon landing She never stood on the pad. She never rode the rocket. But without her slide rule and unerring mind, those men would never have come home. History loves the astronauts who touched the stars. It too often forgets the mathematicians who charted the way through impossible odds. Katherine Johnson didn’t just compute paths through space. She carved paths through prejudice. And the sky has never been the same.