The Original Apollo 11 guidance computer (AGC) source code is now available on Github
The system responsible for the first moon landing is now readily available online, after an enterprising former NASA intern uploaded the Apollo Guidance Computer code to Github this week.
Although the code for the MIT-designed system has long been available to interested researchers, it's never been quite this at hand. Quartz has an excellent, thorough breakdown, but the jokes and asides are a special point of interest.
Reddit has already taken a look under the hood, and uncovered some of the best tidbits. For one, you'll find "BURN_BABY_BURN--MASTER_IGNITION_ROUTINE.agc" in there. In another spot, you can see a note about "TRASHY LITTLE SUBROUTINES."
Happy moon landing day! July 20, 2016 marks the 47th anniversary of Apollo 11's arrival on the moon. The lunar lander holding Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down at 4:18 PM eastern, and Armstrong became the first human in history to walk on the lunar surface at 10:56 PM.
Meet Margaret Hamilton, the badass '60s programmer who saved the moon landing.
Astronauts used the Apollo Guidance Computer, which was placed in both the command module and the lunar module, for navigation assistance and to control the spacecraft, and someone needed to program it.
The software for the guidance computer was written by a team at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory (now the Draper Laboratory), headed up by Margaret Hamilton. Here's an amazing picture of her next to the code she and her colleagues wrote for the Apollo 11 guidance computer that made the moon landing possible:
"In this picture, I am standing next to listings of the actual Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) source code," Hamilton says in an email. "To clarify, there are no other kinds of printouts, like debugging printouts, or logs, or what have you, in the picture." It's just her and her code.
You can explore the code yourself here.
Source: GITHUB
Although the code for the MIT-designed system has long been available to interested researchers, it's never been quite this at hand. Quartz has an excellent, thorough breakdown, but the jokes and asides are a special point of interest.
Reddit has already taken a look under the hood, and uncovered some of the best tidbits. For one, you'll find "BURN_BABY_BURN--MASTER_IGNITION_ROUTINE.agc" in there. In another spot, you can see a note about "TRASHY LITTLE SUBROUTINES."
Happy moon landing day! July 20, 2016 marks the 47th anniversary of Apollo 11's arrival on the moon. The lunar lander holding Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down at 4:18 PM eastern, and Armstrong became the first human in history to walk on the lunar surface at 10:56 PM.
Meet Margaret Hamilton, the badass '60s programmer who saved the moon landing.
Astronauts used the Apollo Guidance Computer, which was placed in both the command module and the lunar module, for navigation assistance and to control the spacecraft, and someone needed to program it.
The software for the guidance computer was written by a team at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory (now the Draper Laboratory), headed up by Margaret Hamilton. Here's an amazing picture of her next to the code she and her colleagues wrote for the Apollo 11 guidance computer that made the moon landing possible:
"In this picture, I am standing next to listings of the actual Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) source code," Hamilton says in an email. "To clarify, there are no other kinds of printouts, like debugging printouts, or logs, or what have you, in the picture." It's just her and her code.
You can explore the code yourself here.
Source: GITHUB
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