Margaret Hamilton, the MIT computer scientist who led development of the Apollo onboard flight software, has died at 90, MIT announced. Hamilton learned to program under an MIT meteorologist and built early systems that detected enemy aircraft before joining the NASA Apollo contract; she said she was the first programmer and the first woman hired for the project. In 1969, minutes before Apollo 11's lunar landing an onboard computer alarm indicated an emergency but the software Hamilton and her team wrote prioritized tasks, recovered from the fault, and allowed the mission to continue. Barack Obama cited that incident when he awarded Hamilton the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, saying the astronauts were fortunate to have her work. Hamilton is survived by a daughter, a son-in-law, two grandsons and four great-grandchildren.
