Raspberry Pi’s news blog covered Recreate Apollo on 22 October 2026: a 1:1 scale, 3D-printed DSKY — the Display and Keyboard unit Apollo astronauts used — driven by a Raspberry Pi running the VirtualAGC emulator with the Apollo 13 Command Module software loaded.
The maker is Michael Newton, a commercial aircraft avionics engineer in Calgary, Alberta, who recreates historical aircraft and spacecraft hardware using modern tools. We confirmed the project repository through the GitHub API: RecreateApollo/RecreateDSKY, licensed GPL-3.0, 30 stars, last pushed 5 October 2026. It is described as a project and personal build journal instructing Apollo enthusiasts on how to build one.
The paper trail is the interesting part
The hardware story starts in an archive, not a workshop.
My interest in the project began many years ago when, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of Apollo enthusiasts began translating the original MIT Instrumentation Lab engineering documents into modern-day CAD files with the eventual goal of 3D printing.
Those documents were released following a public records request and archived by the Virtual AGC group. Newton lost track of the effort, then came across a DSKY built by another maker — Eric, of mkme.org — from the by-then nearly complete drawings on GitHub:
Unsure where he sourced his files, I went on the hunt for them myself. I found many in different GitHub repos or other open-source projects, but other parts needed some work to refine and some others still I had to model on my own. After a few weeks of work, I had a full set of .stp files ready to print that I was satisfied with. I purchased a 3D printer and began learning that world.
That is the whole preservation pipeline in one paragraph: a records request, a volunteer transcription effort, scattered repositories, gaps filled by hand, and a printable part file at the end. Every printed part on Newton’s build is modelled on archived NASA drawings. The one he has is a prototype for an improved version.
What the Pi is doing
Newton’s case for the Raspberry Pi is unglamorous and convincing: it integrates with microcontrollers over USB, it needs little power, it has wireless LAN built in for SSH, it runs cool, and you can roll a custom distribution to hand an entire OS image to other builders — which makes that part of the project copyable.
Underneath, it runs yaAGC, VirtualAGC’s program that replicates the real Apollo Guidance Computer’s characteristics, including:
- the asynchronous timing (interrupt) behaviour behind the 1201/1202 alarm codes that nearly aborted the Apollo 11 landing
- the 15-bit-plus-one-parity word length
- the 1.024 MHz clock
On fidelity, Newton makes a claim worth quoting in full, because it is the argument every serious emulation project eventually arrives at:
Fundamentally, the exact same constraints are preserved in this emulation because the timing of the AGC is kept intact and the memory that the computer reads is virtualisation of the real code that was woven into core rope ROM and magnetised in the RAM. In fact, it emulates the real computer so well that, to me, VirtualAGC is not an emulator. It’s a real Apollo Guidance Computer that borrows your processor.
The machine being recreated
Context for anyone who has not met the AGC: the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory at MIT introduced it in 1966, three years before the first Moon landing, and one was installed in every Apollo Command Module and Lunar Module. It had less than 100 kB of memory and a 1.024 MHz clock — power on a par with an Apple II — and it ran navigation routines, autopilot manoeuvres, burns, orbital rendezvous and Earth entry. It was also the first computer built on silicon integrated circuits.
Newton’s favourite detail, and a good one:
The memory alone was an ingenious design of magnetism and did you know that the Apollo Guidance Computer used only ONE type of logic gate: the 3-input NOR? All the mathematics, data movement, navigation, autopiloting, burns – everything, was just voltage levels going through 3-input-NORs, and the occasional diode arrangement.
Build notes
The keypad is where a faithful recreation meets what you can buy. Newton used off-the-shelf mechanical switches with the highest actuation force and most solid click he could find, settling on Kailh Box Navy:
They feel and sound OK, and they are easy to get, but they are far from the real keypad.
He is working toward a more premium DSKY with a full aluminium body, better annunciators, possibly a real electroluminescent display, and a better keypad to go with it.
There is also a peripheral mode, entered by long-pressing a key, which exposes the DSKY over the local network to Project Apollo – NASSP, an add-on for the Orbiter space flight simulator that simulates the Apollo missions. So the printed panel can either run the real flight software standalone or act as a physical control surface for a simulated spacecraft.
Why we like this one
Three things, and they generalise beyond spaceflight nostalgia.
The archive did the heavy lifting. Without a public records request and a volunteer group patiently turning engineering documents into CAD, no amount of 3D printing skill produces this object. Hardware preservation is mostly a documents problem.
The licence is real. GPL-3.0, on a repository that exists, with a build journal in it. We have spent this month checking projects whose advertised code turns out not to be there, so a verifiable 30-star repository with a copyleft licence and instructions deserves saying out loud.
And the constraints are preserved rather than papered over. A faster emulation of the AGC would be easier and worthless. The point is the 1.024 MHz clock, the single gate type, and the alarm codes firing when the computer is overloaded — because that is what the astronauts were looking at.
The build appeared in issue 171 of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine, a weather-monitoring special that made room for it anyway.
Sources
- Recreate the Apollo Guidance Computer — Raspberry Pi
- RecreateApollo/RecreateDSKY — GitHub
- MKme Lab
- Houston We Have a Problem! Raspberry Pi Apollo Guidance DSKY Adventure — MKme Lab on YouTube