Margaret Hamilton, pioneer whose software enabled the Apollo 11 moon landing, dies at 90 | Space

Margaret Hamilton, the computer pioneer whose software enabled the first moon landing, has died, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced on Wednesday. She was 90 years old.

At a time when software engineer and computer scientist titles were not becoming common, Hamilton, who died on September 30, learned to program under the tutelage of a renowned MIT meteorologist.

She continued to refine the device in a lab at MIT, writing software that could detect enemy aircraft. When the institute received a contract from NASA to develop the Apollo onboard flight software, it jumped at the opportunity.

“I was attracted both by the idea and the fact that it had never been done before. I was the first female programmer to join and the first woman they hired,” she told the Guardian in 2019.

In 1969, minutes before the Apollo 11 spacecraft made history by landing on the lunar surface, an onboard computer’s alarm sounded, indicating an emergency.

Faced with the decision of whether or not to abandon the mission, the spacecraft continued on its way. The software worked exactly as Hamilton and his team intended.

“It quickly became clear that the software was not only informing everyone that there was a hardware problem, but compensating for it by rebooting and reverting to the highest priority tasks. Error detection and recovery mechanisms had come to the rescue,” Hamilton said.

Barack Obama referenced the incident when he presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.

“Our astronauts didn’t have a lot of time, but luckily they had Margaret Hamilton,” he said.

Hamilton is survived by his daughter, a son-in-law, two grandsons and four great-grandchildren, according to MIT.

Reflecting on this mission, in a 2009 interview with MIT News, Hamilton said, “Looking back, we were the luckiest people in the world; we had no choice but to be pioneers; no time to be beginners. »