They included systems designed for missions that the American government could not publicly acknowledge.

The people who worked on them signed agreements that prohibited them from discussing what they had done.

Even after declassification, the attribution of specific contributions to specific individuals within these programs is incomplete.

What can be said about Mary Ross in this context is what the available record actually supports.

She worked within Lockheed’s advanced projects environment.

She worked on problems related to missiles — the mathematical analysis of the performance characteristics of ballistic and guided missiles, the trajectories they followed, the design parameters that governed what they could and could not do.

She worked on problems related to what happened at the edge of the atmosphere and beyond.