NASA spacecraft uses Playstation CPU

It may sound a little crazy, but NASA's New Horizons space probe uses the good old Sony Playstation ones CPU for the core brain of the probes processing power!

Why you might ask? Well NASA chooses to use well tried and tested components with high reliability due to the nature of space exploration. So rather than use something that hasn't got a track record, they will use such a CPU to endure those tricky years in space.

Why not use something more powerful? It's simple, it doesn't need to be, after all it doesn't need to run intensive 3d games!

The power of the Playstation CPU is more than enough for its needs and helps keep energy usage low, what's more have you ever had a PS1 crash on you? Probably not many times in the grand scheme of things if at all. There's also plenty of them still working today if it's not in the loft gathering dust!

Reliability is key, glad they didn't use an Xbox 360 with a potential red ring of death!