Chapter 1 Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon DOING IT RIGHT Tt's July 20 1969 10 56 p m eastern daylight time About five hundred million television viewers are glued to their sets They are watching US astronaut and Apollo 11 mission commander Neil Armstrong step onto the moon He is the first
person in history to walk on the moon Astronaut Edwin Buzz Aldrin joins him twenty minutes later They plant a US flag on the moon's surface and gather samples of rock It took a woman to get them there EMERGENCY But the mission might have failed Earlier that night the lunar lander Eagle had been scheduled to set down on the moon Suddenly the flight software sent flashing warnings The system was overloaded with jobs to be done Tension in the Mission headquarters stayed in contact with the Apollo 11 astronauts during their lunar
spacecraft and at mission headquarters in Houston Texas rose Would the National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA team have to end the mission Would the dream of landing on the moon be postponed TO THE RESCUE Back on Earth thirty two year old software engineer Margaret Hamilton held her breath She had programmed the Apollo 11 software to spot errors and do its most important jobs first She hoped it would focus only on landing Eagle The lander had only thirty seconds of fuel left Armstrong radioed NASA headquarters The Eagle has landed Hamilton's software had done it right The United States had become the first nation to land humans on the moon 3 38°30s TECH TALK I remember thinking Oh my God it worked I was so happy But I was more happy about the software working than about the fact that we landed on the moon Margaret Hamilton 23 333 6
MIDWESTERN ROOTS Margaret H Heafield was born on August 17 1936 in Paoli a small town in southern Indiana Her father Kenneth Heafield was a poet and college professor of philosophy Her mother Ruth Esther Heafield taught high school Margaret loved math and science She liked figuring out how to do things on her own She wanted to know how the world worked and what motivated people Margaret graduated from Hancock High School in 1954 Then she studied math and philosophy at Earlham College in Richmond Indiana One of her favorite teachers was Florence Long the head of the math department Hamilton wanted to have a career like Long's She had no idea that the US space program would change her life forever In high school Margaret also liked music acting and other arts 2°2 7
