USA. – Margaret Hamilton, the computer scientist who led the team that developed the software for NASA's Apollo missions, has died at the age of 90. NASA describes Hamilton's work on the Apollo code as an important part of the technology that took humans to the moon for the first time.
Hamilton died on 30 September 2026 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her death was confirmed by her daughter, Lauren.
Hamilton worked at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory in the 1960s and eventually led the software engineering division. She headed a team of approximately 100 engineers who developed the software used on board Apollo spacecraft. The importance of Hamilton's work came to the fore especially during Apollo 11's historic moon landing on 20 July 1969. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were in the process of landing the lunar module Eagle on the moon's surface when the onboard computer repeatedly issued warnings because the system was overloaded.
The software that Hamilton and her team developed enabled the system to prioritise critical tasks and interrupt less important processes. The landing could consequently proceed and Armstrong and Aldrin landed safely on the moon. Hamilton is also recognised for helping to popularise the term software engineering Her work on error prevention, priority scheduling and reliable software laid a foundation for modern software engineering according to MIT.
In 2016, then US president Barack Obama awarded Hamilton the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the USA's highest civilian honour, for her contribution to science and technology.
Sources: NASA, MIT News, KVIA
This article is an automatic English translation of a Nuusflits article originally published in Afrikaans. Read the Afrikaans original.
