Recreate the Apollo Guidance Computer

Commercial aircraft avionics engineer Michael Newton built an accurate Apollo DSKY replica. Recreate the Apollo Guidance Computer. While the latest issue of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine is a weather-monitoring projects special, we couldn’t resist sharing this build, as we are powerless in the face of anything space-themed.

The maker, Michael Newton, is a commercial aircraft avionics engineer based in Calgary, Alberta. When he’s not on the flight line, he’s learning about and recreating historical aircraft and spacecraft hardware using modern technology and techniques. In 1966, three years before Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the Moon, the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology introduced the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC).

Installed on board each Apollo Command Module and Lunar Module, its power was on a par with the Apple II computer with less than 100kB of memory and a clock speed of 1.024MHz. Yet, as Michael Newton points out, it allowed astronauts to execute navigation routines, autopilot manoeuvres, burns, orbital rendezvous, and Earth entry from their spacecraft. It was also the first computer to be based on silicon integrated circuits.

The case aims to be as faithful as possible to the original and looks like it came straight from the spaceship Michael is an engineer who is passionate about building historical spacecraft hardware using modern technology and techniques and he’s been leading an open source project called Recreate Apollo.