Macedonia Community Development Corporation Inc. (MACorp) will celebrate and close its 2017 summer youth camps with an event featuring guest speaker Dr. Christine Darden at 6 p.m. Wednesday, July 26 at Macedonia Baptist Church, 10246 Northumberland Highway, Heathsville.
Darden is a retired National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) data analyst, mathematician and engineer. In 1967, she was added to the pool of “human computers” who crunched numbers at NASA’s Langley Research Center.
Darden, who lives in Hampton, is among the women whose contributions are featured in the book, Hidden Figures: The Story of the African American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race, by Margot Lee Shetterly (2016). The movie, “Hidden Figures” (2016), was based on the book.
Darden worked for NASA for 40 years. As her career progressed, she became technical leader of NASA’s Sonic Boom Group, where she was responsible for developing the sonic boom research program internally at NASA.