Margaret Hamilton, whose software helped land Apollo 11 on the moon, dies at 90

Margaret Hamilton, the computer scientist whose groundbreaking research helped land NASA's astronauts on the Moon, has died at the age of 90. Hamilton was a trailblazer in her field, leading the team that developed the software for NASA's Apollo missions, coining the term "software engineering." Her former employer, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), confirmed her death, stating she passed away on September 30.

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"To say Hamilton was a pioneer - to say she was ahead of her time - would be a dramatic understatement," MIT said in its statement, acknowledging that she was a software engineer before it became mainstream.

Hamilton worked at MIT from 1959 until the mid-1970s, managing the Software Engineering Division. In this role, she led a team of engineers responsible for writing and testing all onboard in-flight software for NASA's Apollo 11 project, which guided US astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to safely land on the Moon.