Margaret Hamilton, an American computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and her team developed flight software for NASA’s Apollo program.
Photos of her standing next to the code she and her team have developed have surfaced all over the internet for the last few years.
Let’s take a look at Hamilton and her team’s contribution and how she played such an important role in history.
Margaret Hamilton and the Apollo Code
In 1961, the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory signed a contract with NASA to develop the software that would send humans to the moon for the first time. Computer scientist Margaret Hamilton led the software engineering department and played a key role in creating flight software for NASA’s Apollo program.
Hamilton and her team were tasked with creating flight software for the Lunar Surface Module (LM) and Command Module (CM). The code she and her team developed allowed NASA to send humans to the moon in her 1969 for the first time in human history.
In 1969, a Metrology Laboratory staff photographer took a picture of Hamilton standing next to the cord that took man to the moon. She and her team, LM [lunar module] and CM [command module] In-flight software team. ”
Margaret Hamilton, lead developer of NASA’s Apollo program, stands next to all the code she hand-wrote that brought humans to the moon in 1969. pic.twitter.com/x0dM960P6S
— Amazing Astronomy (@MAstronomers) January 21, 2023
The entire code has also been added to the code-sharing site GitHub, making 145,000 lines of code available online.
Now an independent computer scientist, systems engineer, and business owner, Margaret Hamilton will always be remembered for the pivotal role she played in changing the stages of humanity.
