Apollo 11's forgotten women who made it possible for man to walk on the moon

JoAnn Morgan

Hers was one tiny, anxious face amid a sea of anxious faces in Firing Room No1 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 16, 1969.

JoAnn Morgan chewed her nails with the same tension those around her crossed their arms, put hands on their hips and even briefly shut their eyes.

In the terminal almost 50 years ago today, the countdown was inching towards the lift-off of Apollo 11, the first mission to put humans on the moon.

JoAnn Morgan is the only one not wearing a shirt and tie in this image from the Kennedy Space Centre in 1969

Yet in the photo capturing that moment, she stands out a mile – as she is just about the only one not wearing a white shirt and tie.

JoAnn was the only woman locked in there for the blast-off. What’s more, the 28-year-old engineer, the mission’s Instrumentation Controller, responsible for all the ground systems in the area of the launch pad, was the very first woman to remain in that historic room in Cape Canaveral for a rocket launch.

The first to feel the “shockwaves” of the blast and “the vibrations through bone conduction in my body”... JoAnn still becomes excited as she describes that moment today.

JoAnn H. Morgan in 2002

Days later, Neil Armstrong told the world as his boots met moon dust that his was “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” – sexist words accepted at the time, now part of history.

Well, according to JoAnn: “Getting to be there in the Firing Room was a very big step for me. I had been there since 1958, when NASA was founded, as a university student, then six years as an engineer, and I had worked my way up to a more senior engineer. We had already had Apollo 8, 9 and 10.

“Yet before that, I had to leave the room three hours before lift-off and watch in a different Building.

Members of the Kennedy Space Center control room

“I don’t know why. There was fear about the explosion – and not wanting to kill a woman,” she adds, generously. “But before Apollo 11 my director called me in and said ‘You’re going to be on the console, you are my best communicator, we really like the way you spot problems and get them worked rapidly’.

“I didn’t know he’d had to go to the director of Kennedy Space Center and convince him it was OK!”

She adds: “I did have some resistance. Before Apollo 11, I’d had obscene calls. I was like a goldfish in a bowl with all those men, there were 200 cameras and people could watch me on CCTV.

Frances 'Poppy' Northcutt was the first female engineer to work for NASA's Mission Control

“But I had to think like a mosquito bite,” the strong-minded 78-year-old laughs, matter-of-factly. “You slap it and it’s done, it doesn’t stop you going on a hike where there might be mosquitoes!” The astronauts were, of course, men. Although Russian Valentina Tereshkova travelled to space in 1963, it was to be 20 years before another woman followed.

The only women we see in photos and footage of Apollo 11 are the astronauts’ worried wives. Yet among 400,000 people working on the Apollo missions, thousands were women.

Although the majority were more likely to be responsible for secretarial work or even sewing the space suits, there were talented pioneers among them instrumental to the landing’s success. Sadly, they’re often overlooked.

Poppy Northcutt in 2019 

At Mission Control, in Houston, Texas, another young woman was quietly making her mark. Frances “Poppy” Northcutt, now 74, was an engineer who worked on building and designing the return-to-Earth programme for Apollo.

She was the first woman in an operational support role in the control centre and the only one in all Apollo missions.

Poppy explains: “It’s when they do their manoeuvres on the back side of the moon that’s particularly dangerous, that’s where they go into lunar orbit.

Apollo 11 lifts off

“The particular concern is if they have an over or under-burn going into lunar orbit they could be on a crash course. You lose communication and don’t know if things are going well or badly until they come out from behind the moon. That was a scary time for everyone in the control centre.”

Yet despite the huge responsibility Poppy had, some of NASA’s men were more interested in how the young blonde woman looked. “You have a sense people are watching and you need to perform well or it will be noticed,” she recalls.

“There was an incident during the simulations for Apollo 8. You listen in to different communication lines at the same time and I heard chatter in the background occasionally saying ‘look at what is on channel whatever’. I found out it was a camera just pointed at me.” She adds: “It was situation normal for what women experienced at that time.”

But both had fought to be there and weren’t about to give up. Their stories are part of new film Apollo 11.

Even though Poppy, from Houston, excelled at maths and went to university to study it, she’s pretty sure her parents sent her there to “meet a husband”. She never did, nor wanted to.

For her, the moon landing was “beyond exciting” but she watched it home alone, resting during 12-hour shifts, as her priority was getting the astronauts back to Earth.

For JoAnn, who also studied maths, there had been more support at home, her dad was a forward-thinking teacher.

She did marry and it was the support of her husband, a music teacher, “a unique man”, which helped her succeed.

With JoAnn’s job at blast-off done, the couple watched the moon landing with champagne. “After, my husband reached over and said, ‘Hon, you’re gonna be in the history books’.”

• Apollo 11 is currently in cinemas.

Brit expat sent live shots of moon walk to millions

Mike Dinn, the Bradford man who was in charge of the Australian tracking station when Neil Armstrong took his first steps on to the moon

Mike Dinn in later life

Just before 3am GMT on July 21 Neil Armstrong took a first step on the moon.

And the man responsible for ensuring TV networks across the globe saw it as it happened was Mike Dinn, from Bradford, West Yorks. He had resettled in Australia in 1960 and was deputy station director of the Honeysuckle Creek tracking station, near Canberra, Australia – one of three facilities NASA used to keep in touch with Apollo 11. And when Armstrong put his foot on the moon it was on the watch of Mike and his 25-strong team operating the 85ft “big dish”.

Mike, now 86 and still in Canberra with wife Trudy, said managing to maintain contact with the craft and crew was “the highlight of my career”.

He has helped the National Science & Media Museum in Bradford with a moon landing exhibition, running from July 19.