'Hidden Figures' Movie Probes Little-Known Heros of 1960s NASA

“Hidden Figures,” scheduled to release in January 2017, follows three black women whose work was crucial to the early space program at NASA’s Langley Research Center.

“Hidden Figures” transformed a disused hospital in Atlanta into NASA Langley in 1961, a nerve center of America’s early space program.

Katherine G. Johnson, played by Taraji P. Henson, is joined by her co-workers Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) as she greets astronaut John Glenn (Glen Powell), the man destined to become the first American to orbit Earth.

Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe, left), Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) and Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) celebrate during a scene from the film.

Taraji P. Henson stars as Katherine Johnson, a NASA mathematician crucial to the early days of spaceflight (and beyond).

In “Hidden Figures,” Janelle Monáe portrays Mary Jackson, who became one of the first female engineers at NASA Langley.

Kevin Costner — who plays Al Harrison, an amalgam of three heads of NASA Langley — poses in the meticulously recreated mission control on the set of “Hidden Figures.”

Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) offers help to NASA mission specialist Karl Zielinski (Olek Krupa) in a shot from “Hidden Figures.”

Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) are the focal points of “Hidden Figures,” which chronicles the little-known black female mathematicians, known as “computers” at the time, whose work was crucial to the first American orbiting the Earth.