NASA Trials Ultra-Hardened Space SoC to Power Autonomous Deep-Space Missions
NASA's JPL is testing a radiation-hardened, high-performance system-on-a-chip from Microchip designed to deliver up to 100x the computational power of today’s spaceflight computers. It must endure radiation, extreme temperatures, and physical shocks, enabling autonomous AI-driven responses for Earth-orbiters, rovers, and future crewed missions. Early results are promising, showing about 500x the performance of current radiation-hardened chips, with tests using realistic landing scenarios to validate real-world operation.