“Wishing a #happybirthday to Katherine G Johnson on her 100th birthday today,” Nasa’s official history office wrote in a tweet.
Her calculations were critical to our early human spaceflight programme (you've probably seen that in the movies).”.
After graduating high school at the age of 14, she entered the historically black college where she studied maths and science.
Ms Johnson was eventually joined the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, which would became Nasa.
Twenty people were confirmed dead after the vintage World War II aircraft crashed into a Swiss mountainside, police reports said.
“So what can you say after a century about someone like Dr Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson - our very own global, global genius?
Ahead of her birthday, Ms Johnson attributed her longevity to good luck, and keeping share by playing bridge and board games. »