MIT played a key role in enabling the first moon landing through its research on spacecraft navigation and guidance systems. In the 1960s, MIT's Instrumentation Laboratory, led by Charles Draper, developed the Apollo Guidance Computer and digital flight control platforms. These innovative systems, though primitive by today's standards, allowed astronauts like Buzz Aldrin to safely navigate the 500,000-mile round trip to the moon and achieve the historic first manned lunar landing.

1. HOW MIT KNOW-
HOW LANDEDTHE
FIRST HUMANS ON
THE MOON
Art Samberg

2. Introduction
■ A decade ago, Arthur J. “Art” Samberg founded Hawkes Financial, LLC, in
upstate NewYork, and he continues to lead the family-owned investment
firm. Previously successful on a global level as CEO of Pequot Capital
Management, Inc., Art Samberg is additionally a noted philanthropist. Mr.
Samberg’s major gifts include funding for a new conference center at the
Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology (MIT), from whose Department of
Aeronautics and Astronautics he graduated in 1962.
In addition to educating astronauts like Edwin “Buzz”Aldrin, MIT
conducted the ground-breaking navigational research that made the
historic Apollo 11 lunar landing possible.
Navigating a spacecraft is a complex endeavor, particularly when the goal
is to make a round-trip journey of some 500,000 miles, with a safe lunar
landing at the center of the mission.

3. MIT
■ In the 1960s, Charles Draper led the engineers in the MIT
Instrumentation Laboratory. His colleagues, senior lecturer
Richard Battin and David Hoag, were in charge of the development
of associated computer guidance systems that would allow
Apollo’s astronauts to manage their descent and landing on the
moon. Other MIT scientists developed digital flight control
platforms to serve the crew’s command module and the lunar
module.
The Apollo Guidance Computer, the most advanced of its time,
possessed far less memory than a cheap cell phone today. But it
worked so well that it continued to be used on other space
missions into the mid-1970s.