{"id":624611,"date":"2026-10-08T18:48:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T18:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/624611\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T18:48:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T18:48:15","slug":"margaret-hamilton-scientist-who-worked-on-nasas-apollo-programme-dead-at-90","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/624611\/","title":{"rendered":"Margaret Hamilton, scientist who worked on Nasa\u2019s Apollo programme, dead at 90"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nasa chief Jared Isaacman paid tribute to Hamilton on X, calling her \u201ca pioneer whose work helped make Apollo and humanity\u2019s first journeys to the moon possible\u201d.<\/p>\n

Born in Indiana in 1936, Hamilton studied mathematics before moving to Boston, Massachusetts, with her husband in 1959.<\/p>\n

She found employment at MIT, working in meteorology before she joined a lab in 1965 that was seeking people to develop software to \u201csend a man to the Moon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamilton \u201cwas hired as the first programmer for the Apollo project at MIT, as well as the first female programmer in the project\u201d, the university said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy 1968, she was assistant director in charge of [Apollo\u2019s] Command and Service Module team, and more than 400 people were working on Apollo\u2019s software,\u201d MIT said.<\/p>\n

\u2018Pioneer\u2019<\/p>\n

Hamilton was credited with making critical onboard systems more robust and accident-resistant.<\/p>\n

Her software intervened approximately three minutes before the Eagle lander of the historic Apollo 11 mission touched down on the Moon, overriding a faulty script and ensuring the mission could safely continue, according to Nasa.<\/p>\n

Jerry Wohletz, CEO of the Draper Laboratory \u2013 which was spun out of the MIT Instrumentation Lab \u2013 said Hamilton left \u201can indelible mark\u201d on the company.<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough her leadership and contributions to the development of the onboard flight software for Nasa\u2019s Apollo Guidance Computer, she helped ensure that Apollo astronauts landed safely on the lunar surface and safely returned home.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"ThisThis undated handout photograph released by The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum on July 11, 2019, shows Margaret Hamilton, a member of Draper Laboratory Staff at work during the Apollo missions. Photo \/ AFP\/file<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will honour her legacy at Draper forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamilton was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by former President Barack Obama in 2016 for her achievements.<\/p>\n

In 2009, Hamilton told MIT News: \u201cThere was no second chance. We knew that. We took our work seriously, many of us beginning this journey while still in our 20s.<\/p>\n

\u201cComing up with solutions and new ideas was an adventure. Dedication and commitment were a given. Mutual respect was across the board. Because software was a mystery, a black box, upper management gave us total freedom and trust.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking back, we were the luckiest people in the world; there was no choice but to be pioneers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamilton went on to publish more than 130 papers and started her own software companies, Higher Order Software and Hamilton Technologies.<\/p>\n

– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nasa chief Jared Isaacman paid tribute to Hamilton on X, calling her \u201ca pioneer whose work helped make…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624612,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61925,8239,53955,1975,21136,690,170,6179,6288,9876,87076,37731,111,139,69,90,9527,147,388,392,6211,13797,1299,87539],"class_list":["post-624611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-61925","tag-american","tag-apollo","tag-at","tag-computer","tag-dead","tag-development","tag-died","tag-hamilton","tag-lunar","tag-margaret","tag-nasas","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-programme","tag-science","tag-scientist","tag-space","tag-system","tag-used","tag-who","tag-worked"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}