Margaret Hamilton, the computer scientist who designed the software that landed NASA Apollo rockets on the Moon, has died aged 90. NASA chiefs said she "helped make Apollo and humanity’s first journeys to the Moon possible" after her death was confirmed.
Pioneer of software engineering
Born in Paoli in the US state of Indiana in 1936, Hamilton became a pioneer in the development of the field of software engineering and is credited with inventing the term. After being hired by NASA in 1961, she led a team of 100 engineers that designed the programs on the computers used for the lunar missions, including the historic Apollo 11 landing which saw Neil Armstrong step on to the Moon's surface.
Her software ended up saving the first manned mission by automatically fixing a critical computer error just three minutes before landing. Hamilton was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama in 2016 for her contribution to science and space travel.
Tribute from NASA Administrator
In a tribute on X (formerly Twitter), NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said: "Margaret Hamilton was a pioneer whose work helped make Apollo and humanity’s first journeys to the Moon possible. The best way to honour her legacy is to finally pick up where her generation left off and never stop going."
Hamilton began her career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she wrote software to predict weather patterns. She was working for the university when it secured a NASA contract in 1961 to build the navigation systems for the Apollo programme, rising to manage the lab's software engineering division.
Career and legacy
Aged just 29, she directed a team of roughly 100 engineers to design and develop the onboard guidance and control software for the Apollo command and lunar modules, and took the lead on error prevention coding that proved vital to the success of the missions. During the Apollo 11 mission, a radar error almost derailed the flight just three minutes before reaching the Moon, but Hamilton's software identified the fault and allowed the astronauts to land safely.
Hamilton remained at MIT until the mid-1970s, eventually leaving to launch her own private companies, Higher Order Software and Hamilton Technologies. The university confirmed her death aged 90 on September 30. Olivier de Weck, the Apollo Program Professor and interim head of the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, said: "To say Margaret Hamilton was a pioneer - to say she was ahead of her time - would be a dramatic understatement. She was a software engineer at a time when that field was in its infancy, and she not only developed advanced code herself but also led a team in using that nascent technology to develop one of the most complex systems humanity had ever achieved."
