The Woman Who Was the Hidden Hero of Apollo 11

There is a fact that no one knows about NASA's most successful mission, Apollo 11, which resulted in man's landing on the moon. Apollo 11 encountered a big problem during the landing on the moon, and while the mission was almost to be canceled, the problem is solved at that moment and the landing is carried out successfully.

It's not Neil Armstrong or Bas Aldrin who did it. Margaret Hamilton, who took precautions by calculating beforehand that this problem might occur. So, if it wasn't for she, we wouldn't have footprints on any other land in the universe. I'll talk a little bit about Apollo 11's problem, but this article is about Margaret, the secret hero of the mission. So let's talk a little bit about her first.

Born in 1936 in Indiana, Hamilton studied mathematics and philosophy at Earlham College in 1958. After teaching high school for a few years, she works at the MIT programming labs. She then wants to do a PhD in mathematics, but at this time she receives an offer from one of the laboratories she works at. This lab is working on a computer that will be used for NASA's manned space missions. Here it should be mentioned that; Back then, there was no coding education like today. Even coding was such a new field and few people were aware of it. Therefore, Hamilton did not know coding at the time of this job and would learn while working. Hamilton is starting this business, and one of his first tasks was to design a program for an unmanned mission that would tell the computer what to do if the mission failed.

Hamilton admits that in the following years NASA gave him this job because he was a novice. Because NASA certainly did not believe that the mission would fail, but in the end, the unexpected happens and the mission fails.

There were many factors Hamilton had to consider in designing the program he was given. For example, what would the computer do if a very important device did not work or the vehicle ran out of fuel. After this mission, Hamilton's main mission at NASA is determined. It would take into account all adverse scenarios the spacecraft could experience during a mission and identify a recovery scenario for each. He would code them and put them into practice. Just like in Apollo 8, NASA's first failed manned mission.

Before the task, the programmers, as always, perform a simulation of the task. Meanwhile, Hamilton's 4-year-old daughter, whom he had to bring to NASA, does what all 4-year-olds would do, pressing a button that should not be pressed, and the simulation crashes. Hamilton thought of the possibility that such an error could occur during flight.

So an astronaut couldn't accidentally press a button, too?

Therefore, Hamilton wants to write a program against such errors and find a solution. But NASA refuses, saying that since the astronauts are not 4 years old, they won't accidentally press the button. Then Apollo 8 launches and guess what happens in 5 days of the mission?

Yes, one of the astronauts presses the wrong button and some of the data necessary for the vehicle to return to earth is deleted. NASA engineers spent 9 hours trying to solve this problem, and they fixed it by sending a new dataset to the Apollo computer. This mistake could also lead to a disaster. But if Hamilton had been given permission, this problem would have been resolved immediately.

Let's go back to the problem Apollo 11 had. Let's explain without going into technical details; When Apollo 11 landed on the moon, what he said would never happen happens for the second time, and the computer is overloaded due to one of the astronauts giving a wrong command. During the descent, ninety percent of the computer needs to focus only on the descent, but the programmers cannot solve this overload problem. Frankly, they start the task by praying that this problem does not occur and trusting the solution that Hamilton and his team will find.

Hamilton and his team solve this problem by using the prioritization feature, that is, by making the computer run all the tasks not in the order given, but by allocating the necessary power to the process that is required at that time. In short, Apollo 11 is experiencing an overload problem by not answering the prayers of the programmers during the moon landing. Thanks to Hamilton's solution, this problem is solved at that moment and the Moon landing is successful.

After the Apollo 11 mission, Hamilton continues to work for NASA and takes part in America's first space station, Skylab. Hamilton is the person who coined the term software engineering and thus has the title of first software engineer to work for NASA. Also, She is the first to use prioritization in software.

Yes, without Hamilton, Neil Armstorng would not have uttered his famous phrase; “This is one small step for me, but one giant leap for humanity.”

Thank you Margaret...