
New York City, NY
Toni Ann Hoffman
One Small Step For Women
Class: 3D Modelling
School Year: Freshman, Spring
With the basis of creating a public sculpture, I was inspired by the works and research conducted by Katherine Johnson, specifically her calculations for NASA.
The piece shows details of her trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s May 1961 Freedom 7 mission. With this, I also included the Apollo 11 Command Module, since she was part of the team that calculated the path to get to and from the Moon.
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The final piece presents Johnson's calculations beside a visual of the Apollo 11 Command Module.


Public Piece
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Keeping in mind this would be displayed to the public I wanted to create a piece that made the user walk around the piece and truly explored all its details as a while rather than stay their stagnantly.
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Focus Subject​
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The piece revolved around Katherine Johnsons, an American mathematician who calculated and analyzed numerous flight paths of multiple spacecrafts during her time with the U.S. space program.
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She did calculations for Alan Shepard's trajectory and the Apollo 11 mission that helped computed the path from and to the Moon.
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Although Katherine held an abundance of accomplishments in her life time, I chose to focus on her calculations specifically.
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Process
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I started off with lisitng all her calculations as accurately I could with past records. In a true setting these would be served as plaques covering the entire strutcure.
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This layout and assembly was as close to the trajectory notes as I could get.
Body
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The body mimics the moon, a significant part of Katherine's career. With this I created a light up clay base to serve as the base of the entire structure.





Alan Shepard's Trajectory​
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Katherine Johnson did the trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s May 1961 Freedom 7 mission.
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This is the main piece I focused on through looking at the numerous accomplishments she held.
Concept Model
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I created a 3D Model to better understand my vision with this project. With this I created a light up moon base that holds a rotating structure made from wood and recycled materials.

Imagined Space
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I envisioned this piece to sit at the center of the NASA Central Campus Headquarters Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
I chose this to be an important donation to the NASA headquarters and emphasize the need to praise and treasure such an accomplished woman who I believe was one of the most important people during many of their missions.
Final Design
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The overall render helps get a cleaner look, creating a neater environment. Althoguh for the final piece I would still go with the clay base that mimics the moon. The rotating structure would be recycled metal from old NASA projects.


Apollo 11 Command Module
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As Katherine helped with the calculations to get from and to the moon I included the module to nod to this accomplishment.
Alan Shepard's Trajectory
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The plaques suurounding the rotating structure would contain the trajectory notes Katherine used for the Freedom 7 mission in May 1961, America's first human spaceflight.
Movement
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The peice would rotate back in a circle as the Module would move around the notes.
Moon Base​
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With Katherine's accomplishments with the Moon mission I decided to include a light up moon base to highlight the overall piece in the indoor setting.