Margaret Hamilton — the computer scientist whose onboard flight software carried NASA’s Apollo astronauts to the moon, a journey NASA will repeat with Artemis 2 — dies at 90. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her former employer, confirmed her death this week, CNN reported.
She died on September 30 at a hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts. No cause of death was disclosed.
Margaret Hamilton dies: the woman behind Apollo’s code
Hamilton joined MIT in 1959 and later moved to the university’s Instrumentation Laboratory. She became the first programmer hired for the Apollo project, and the first woman on its programming team. By 1968 she was assistant director in charge of the Command and Service Module team, overseeing hundreds of engineers.
She is credited with popularising the term “software engineering” at a time when software work was dismissed as secondary to hardware. Her team’s priorities-based software proved decisive during Apollo 11’s descent, when the guidance computer became overloaded with data. The software discarded low-priority tasks, kept the landing on course, and completed one of the most complex programmes humanity had attempted — a feat modern missions like Artemis II’s record moon flyby still chase. Modern spaceflight, from SpaceX Crew-13’s ISS mission, still runs on the reliability principles she pioneered.
“To say Hamilton was a pioneer — to say she was ahead of her time — would be a dramatic understatement,” said Olivier de Weck, the Apollo Program professor and interim head of MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Recognition late in life
Hamilton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2016 for her work on the Apollo missions. A Lego set celebrating the women of NASA, released in 2017, included a figure of her standing beside a towering stack of Apollo code listings.
She founded two software companies, Higher Order Software in 1976 and Hamilton Technologies in 1986, and published more than 130 papers over her career.
Her daughter, Lauren Hamilton, told the Associated Press that Hamilton was happy to receive recognition late in life. “She definitely went from nobody knowing who she was to suddenly everyone knowing who she was, especially in her field,” she said. “She was kind of a reserved person, so the spotlight wasn’t necessarily a natural thing for her.”
FAQ
Who was Margaret Hamilton?
An American computer scientist who led the team at MIT’s Instrumentation Laboratory that wrote the onboard flight software for NASA’s Apollo program, including Apollo 11’s moon landing in 1969.
What was her main contribution?
She built the software that guided Apollo spacecraft and pioneered reliable, fault-tolerant computing methods — including priority scheduling that saved Apollo 11’s landing when the computer overloaded. She also coined the term “software engineering.”
When did she die?
September 30, 2026, at the age of 90. MIT confirmed her death this week.
