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Surprising facts about the New Horizons spacecraft
Yes, folks. New Horizons, the spacecraft that gave us the most detailed views of Pluto to date, is a distant cousin of the popular Sony PlayStation game console—the original one released 21 years ago.
That's because both machines share the same central processing unit - a 32-bit MIPS R3000 processor going at a blazing 12 MHz.
"MIPS R3000 is a 32-bit RISC microprocessor chip found in workstations and servers designed by companies such as Evans & Sutherland, DEC, Silicon Graphics, Tandem Computers, Whitechapel Workstations and many others; most notably, it was the CPU of choice for the original PlayStation game console from Sony and is still being used by Toshiba in a range of microcontrollers," tech firm Imagination Technologies' Alexandru Voica said in a blog post.
Tech site The Verge put it succinctly:
Yep, the same MIPS R3000 CPU that once ran Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid was repurposed by NASA in 2006 to fire thrusters, monitor sensors, and transmit data from the New Horizons space probe.
"You may have thought defeating Ruby Weapon was an achievement but try orchestrating a gravity-assisted flyby past Jupiter on a four-hour time delay," it added.
Mongoose-V is a radiation-hardened version of the MIPS R3000 CPU. It was made by Florida-based Synova.
Aboard New Horizons, the Mongoose-V "analyzes positional information, distributes operating commands to multiple spacecraft subsystems, collects and processes instrument data, and sends bursts of data back to Earth," Voica noted.
It also helps the spacecraft auto-correct any issues or contact operators on Earth for help, he added.
It has two computer systems: one for command and data handling and another for guidance and control.
"For safety reasons, each of the two systems is duplicated, leading to a total of four on-board processors," Voica said.
Onboard astronomer
Unknown to many, the New Horizons spacecraft actually has a human onboard: it is carrying the ashes of US astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930.
Tombaugh was born in 1906 into a farming family. Unable to go to college, he was a self-taught astronomer who built his own telescopes with lenses and mirrors that he crafted himself. His homemade telescopes helped him make detailed drawings of Mars and Jupiter that so impressed professional astronomers that he was offered a job at Arizona's Lowell Observatory. It was here that he made his discovery of Pluto on February 13, 1930.
He passed away in 1997.
He passed away in 1997.
Not unusual
This was not the first time a spacecraft was powered by a seemingly everyday object: the lunar landings in the 1960s were powered by a microchip with the processing power of a pocket calculator.
The Verge said that this choice of an apparently low-tech solution is not unusual for the National Aeronautics Space Administration, which has preferred the tried-and-tested to the cutting-edge.
It noted the next-generation Orion spacecraft, which is being eyed to take humans to Mars — is controlled by an IBM processor made in 2002.
That's because NASA needs reliability more than computing power from the CPU, it said. — Joel Locsin/TJD, GMA News
