August 15, 2016

– In the first trailer for the upcoming 20th Century Fox movie "Hidden Figures," Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan find themselves stuck on the side of an empty country road as an officer pulls up behind their car.

"We are just on our way to work, at NASA," says Johnson, portrayed by Taraji P. Henson.

"I had no idea they hired—" the cop begins to reply, before being cut off by Vaughan (Octavia Spencer).

"There are quite a few women in the space program," she says, before he can react to the color of their skin.

Chances are, most people watching the movie trailer today are like that officer, at least in one regard — unaware of the roles that African-American women played in the early days of the space race — even though the events depicted in "Hidden Figures" occurred more than half a century ago.

Click to enlarge and watch in pop-up window. (20th Century Fox)

The movie, which the trailer notes is "based on the untold true story," dramatizes the story of Vaughan, Johnson and Jackson who were among the black women hired to work at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, as "computers," before that title came to refer to inanimate electronic devices.

Working in then stil segregated South, alongside the space agency's male – and mostly white – engineers, the women calculated the data from wind tunnel tests and devised the trajectories needed to send America's first astronauts into space.

Johnson, in particular, gained some fame after John Glenn requested she "check the numbers" that were generated by a room-size IBM computer that was meant to guide his flight as the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth.

"You know what we're doing here?" queries Kevin Costner, playing the fictional Al Harrison, a NASA manager. "We're putting a human atop of a missile, shooting him into space and it has never been done before."

"I need a mathematician," he continues in the trailer, "who can look beyond the numbers, math that doesn't yet exist. Before the Russians plant a flag on the damn moon."

"Hidden Figures" movie poster. (20th Century Fox)

The movie, which opens in theaters next year on Jan. 13, is based on journalist Margot Lee Shetterly's new book by the same title. Shetterly was still penning "Hidden Figures" when it was optioned to become a feature film.

William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, is set to release the book on Sept. 6.

As described by Shetterly on her website, the film takes "a snippet" from the three decades of history covered in her book to bring the story of Johnson, Vaughan and Jackson, along with the other black women who worked in Langley's West Computing division, to the movie-going audience.

In addition to Henson, Spencer and Costner, the film also stars singer Janelle Monáe as Mary Jackson, Jim Parsons as the fictional NASA engineer Paul Stafford, Glen Powell as astronaut John Glenn and Kirsten Dunst as one of the white female "computers." Directed by Theodore Melfi, the movie features original music by Pharrell Williams, who is also credited as a producer.

"Yes, they let women do some things at NASA," Johnson (Henson) says at one point during the trailer. "And it is not because we wear skirts, it is because we wear glasses."