The Pocket Calculator That Flew on Apollo-Soyuz: How a Handheld Device Became a Spaceflight Backup
In the 1970s, spacecraft computers were highly specialized machines built specifically for the harsh environment of space. Yet during one historic mission, NASA astronauts carried something surprisingly familiar alongside their sophisticated onboard systems: a handheld calculator. The calculator was an Hewlett-Packard HP-65, one of the earliest programmable handheld scientific calculators. NASA selected it for the … Read more