July 20, 1969. Just minutes from the Moon, Apollo 11’s computer began flashing terrifying alarms. With the world watching, failure meant abort—or death. But the system didn’t crash. It adapted. That lifesaving decision was built years earlier by Margaret Hamilton, the software engineer who led the Apollo Guidance Computer team. She designed code that could prioritize, recover, and survive overloads. When chaos struck, her software chose what mattered most: landing safely. Humanity reached the Mo