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[00:00.41] The United States Congress has honored four women known as the “hidden figures” of the space race with its highest civilian award.

[00:15.01] The Congressional Gold Medal was presented Wednesday to the families of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and Christine Darden at the U.S. Capitol.

[00:31.48] Only Darden is still living.

[00:34.93] The 82-year-old watched the ceremony from her Connecticut home.

[00:42.11] Lawmakers recognized the four Black mathematicians for their critical work early in the space program.

[00:51.93] They also presented a medal to all the women who worked as mathematicians, engineers and "human computers" in the American space program from the 1930s to 1970s.

[01:10.53] Margot Lee Shetterly wrote the 2016 book Hidden Figures about the Black women mathematicians who supported the space program in the 1960s.

[01:25.67] It was made into a movie of the same name in 2017.

[01:31.78] "By honoring them, we honor the very best of our country's spirit," Shetterly said at the ceremony.

[01:42.14] The early space program employed hundreds of women to work as mathematicians at what is now NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia.

[01:55.95] But, the Black mathematicians were not permitted to work with the white mathematicians because of racial separation policies at the time.

[02:07.64] The Black researchers’ work went unrecognized for years.

[02:13.75] The team used pencils, slide rulers and mechanical calculating machines to calculate the paths of rockets and orbiters in the atmosphere and in space.

[02:28.89] The path is called the trajectory.

[02:32.34] “Our office computed all the trajectories,” Katherine Johnson told The Virginian-Pilot newspaper in 2012.

[02:42.97] “You tell me when and where you want it to come down, and I will tell you where and when and how to launch it,” she explained.

[02:55.18] In 1961, Johnson did trajectory research for the Freedom 7 Mission, the first to carry an American into space.

[03:07.93] The next year, she checked the calculations made by a new NASA computer for astronaut John Glenn’s planned orbits around the planet.

[03:20.15] John Glenn did not trust the new computer.

[03:25.20] Days before the launch, he told NASA, “Get the girl to check the numbers.” John Glenn become the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962.

[03:40.07] Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 – the nation's highest civilian honor.

[03:51.50] Her work at NASA helped open doors for many other women to take part in the space program.

[04:01.59] Dorothy Vaughan rose to become NASA's first Black female supervisor.

[04:09.03] Mary Jackson was NASA's first Black female engineer.

[04:13.54] And Christine Darden is best known for her sonic boom research.