On September 18, representatives from Peraton attended the Congressional Gold Medal reception honoring the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Hidden Figures.
The Congressional Gold Medal is the highest civilian award given by the U.S. Congress. This year, the Hidden Figures of NASA’s space program were recognized. Friends, family, and esteemed professionals attended the ceremony to celebrate scientists Katherine Johnson, Christine Darden, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, who supported NASA’s mission during the Space Race from the early 1930s to the 1970s.
Each of these women, and many more, made a monumental impact on space travel and discovery by calculating rocket trajectories and earth orbits. Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson credited these women with laying the foundation for the NASA space program that launched rockets and landed men on the moon.
Peraton is a proud member of the Space Transportation Agency, a key sponsor for the ceremony and reception. The reception gave team members the opportunity to network and share their experiences from the space industry with U.S. Congress members, corporate leaders, and NASA leadership. Notable attendees at the reception included NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, Hidden Figures Author Margot Lee Shetterly, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and Senators Shelley Moore Capito and Christopher Coons.
NASA is currently the top customer of Peraton’s Civil Space business unit. The company’s Space & Intelligence (S&I) sector has an established presence at eight NASA centers, the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, and several test facilities and ground stations across the globe. The communications and navigation services Peraton provides are essential to the operation of NASA and commercial spaceflight missions. Some highlights from the company’s S&I sector work include operating and maintaining the Deep Space Network communications systems, as well as building sounding rockets, which carry scientific instruments into space along a parabolic trajectory.
Building upon the foundation that the Hidden Figures laid, Peraton is proud to support NASA in its mission to explore the unknown.
