Margaret Hamilton, Whose Software Helped Land Apollo Astronauts on the Moon, Has Dies at 90
MIT said Hamilton led a 100-engineer team and her Apollo code helped astronauts continue the Moon landing after a computer overload.
- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology confirmed on October 8 the death of Margaret Hamilton, the pioneering software engineer who led Apollo missions' on-board flight software development. She was 90 and died on September 30; the cause was not disclosed.
- Hamilton joined the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory in 1965 and led a team of 100 engineers designing guidance software for NASA's Apollo missions, work that established her as a founder of the professional field of 'software engineering.'
- During the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, Hamilton's software overrode an errant radar command three minutes before landing, an intervention NASA said "permitted the mission to safely continue." She also introduced a failsafe called "the Lauren error."
- In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded Hamilton the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contributions to science, recognizing earlier honors including NASA's 2003 Exceptional Space Act Award.
- Draper Laboratory CEO Jerry Wohletz said Hamilton left an "indelible mark" through her leadership, helping ensure Apollo astronauts landed safely and returned home, cementing her legacy as a foundational figure in space exploration.
195 Articles
195 Articles
Margaret Hamilton, the NASA pioneer whose software saved the Apollo 11 mission and laid the foundation for modern software engineering, has died.
Margaret Hamilton, the pioneering researcher whose computer code helped NASA's Apollo astronauts land on the moon, has passed away. She was 90.
Her Pioneering Software Code Guided Apollo 11
A pioneering software engineer whose code helped get humans ono the moon for the first time has died at 90. Margaret Hamilton, who led the team that wrote the onboard software for NASA's Apollo missions, died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reports the New York Times. Hired in 1965 as the first...
Margaret Hamilton, a software pioneer who made the Apollo 11 landing possible, died at the age of 90; so far, the cause of his death has not been reported.
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