posted 02-19-2025 04:22 PM               

2025 Michael Collins Trophy Awarded to Margaret Hamilton and the OSIRIS-REx Team

The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum will award its 2025 Michael Collins Trophy to Margaret Hamilton for Lifetime Achievement and the OSIRIS-REx Team for Current Achievement. These annual awards will be presented to this year's recipients at a ceremony March 27 at the museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.

Established in 1985, the award recognizes outstanding achievements in the fields of aerospace science and technology and their history. Trophy winners receive a miniature version of "The Web of Space," a sculpture by artist John Safer. The Michael Collins Trophy recognizes Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins' contributions to aerospace and his service to the museum as director during a critical time in its evolution.

"We are excited to welcome the 2025 recipients to a prestigious group of changemakers and innovators who have received the Michael Collins Trophy," said Chris Browne, the John and Adrienne Mars Director of the museum. "Few individuals have shaped the aerospace computing field throughout their career more than Margaret Hamilton, and the OSIRIS-REx team accomplished what was previously thought impossible in successfully landing a spacecraft on an asteroid and returning samples to Earth. We are thrilled to present these awards to recipients so deserving of this honor."

Lifetime Achievement Recipient — Margaret Hamilton

Over her career, software engineer Hamilton founded two companies, contributed substantively to key moments of 20th-century aerospace innovation, reshaped an entire academic discipline and saved the fate of a lunar mission with her programming code.

Her work on Project Apollo was crucial to the success of the moon landings and fundamentally reshaped the field of software engineering. Hamilton oversaw the code writing and crucial software testing needed to guide the Apollo spacecraft to lunar orbit and ultimately the lunar surface.

Her long career intersected frequently with aerospace, from tracking meteorological phenomena and atmospheric physics through mathematical coding, to investigating program reliability for NORAD's SAGE air defense system, to refining onboard electronics for Skylab and the Space Shuttle. Hamilton's influence has laid the groundwork for the innovative software platforms that are remaking today's aerospace industry, and her competence and highly respected methods have quietly proven that women engineers can excel.

Current Achievement Recipient — OSIRIS-REx

NASA's OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) achieved the first asteroid sample return by the United States, as well as the largest quantity of returned planetary material from beyond the Moon. Additionally, during its orbital survey of the asteroid, the OSIRIS-REx mission was awarded a Guinness World Record for the closest orbit of a planetary body.

Its mission seeks answers to the question of how the building blocks of life were delivered to the early Earth through analysis of samples from the 4.5 billion-year-old asteroid Bennu.

The OSIRIS-REx team overcame many obstacles to collect over 120 grams of rock and dust from Bennu in 2020 and return them to Earth in 2023. These samples serve as a "time capsule" from the beginning of the solar system. Scientists around the world have begun analyzing the samples to learn more about the origins of Earth and have delivered preliminary findings with many more revelations to come.