JoAnn Morgan

JoAnn Morgan was an American engineer who became the first female engineer to work inside NASA's Launch Control Center at Kennedy Space Center, and the only woman present in the firing room for the launch of Apollo 11 in July 1969, where she monitored the Saturn V rocket's instrumentation systems. She joined NASA as a teenager in 1958, the year the agency was founded, working her way up through the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs despite facing significant workplace resistance as one of the only women in a male-dominated launch operations environment, including having to fight for basic access such as a women's restroom near the firing room. She went on to hold a series of increasingly senior engineering and management positions at Kennedy Space Center over a nearly four-decade NASA career, including director of the Safety, Reliability and Quality Assurance office, becoming one of the highest-ranking women in NASA's history and a frequently cited role model for women pursuing careers in launch and mission operations engineering.