Throughout the years, microprocessors have played a large role in spacecrafts. space-qualified microprocessors are designed to be exceptionally reliable and highly durable. Due to their unique nature, the same set of chips that have been tested and proven to work are used in many spacecrafts. Below is a list of microprocessors used in spacecraft.
1950s[edit]
|Year||Picture||Spacecraft||Chipset|
|1959-1963||200px||Mercury spacecraft||None|
|Description: The Mercury spacecraft, NASA's first human spaceflight, had barely enough space for a single occupant. The spacecraft had no independent maneuvering capabilities - relying completely on the Atlas booster rocket. Because of that, it was unnecessary for the spacecraft to have a dedicated on-board computer. Limited functionality was done by various smaller systems.|
1960s[edit]
|Year||Picture||Spacecraft||Chipset|
|System||Processor||Frequency||Memory||Weight|
|1962-1966||Gemini Spacecraft||Gemini Guidance Computer||discrete IC RTL||7.143 kHz||19.5 KB||58.98 lb|
|The Gemini Spacecraft was part of Project Gemini, NASA's second human spaceflight program.|
|1961-1972||Apollo spacecraft||Apollo Guidance Computer||discrete IC RTL||2.048 MHz||4 KB (RAM)||70 lb|
|The Apollo spacecraft was part of the Apollo program, NASA's third human spaceflight program.|
73.73 KB (ROM)
1970s[edit]
|Year||Picture||Spacecraft||Description|
|1971||Pioneer 10||The Pioneer 10, which was launched on March 3, 1972, became the first spacecraft to achieve escape velocity from the Solar System. The spacecraft's process were made of individual transistor-transistor logic chips. A common myth is that the Intel 4004 powered the Pioneer 10, however, this is incorrect.|
|1973||Pioneer 11||The Pioneer 11, was launched on April 6, 1973 in order to study the Asteroid belt. Just like it's twin probe, the Pioneer 10, its CPU was also a custom-designed TTL CPU.|
|Skylab||The Skylab, which was launched on May 14, 1973, and operated until 1979, used an IBM System/4Pi model TC-1 (Tactical Computer), a miniaturized and hardened version of the IBM System/360 computers.|
|1975||Viking 1||The Viking 1, the first of two spacecrafts, was launched on August 20, 1975. The Viking 2, was launched a year later on September 9, 1975 The computer on-board the Viking Orbiter was the Viking Orbiter CCS, a custom 18-bit TTL computer designed by General Electric. The lander computers, the Guidance, Control and Sequencing Computer, used two Honeywell HDC 402 microprocessors. (A common myth is that the Viking used an RCA 1802, this is incorrect).|
|Viking 2|
|1977||Voyager 1||The Voyager 1 and its sister craft Voyager 2 were launched on September 5 and August 20 of 1977 and are still operating to date (2014). On August 25, 2012, NASA announced that Voyager 1 entered interstellar space.|
|Voyager 2|
Each craft carries three dual-redundant computer systems. The first one, the Voyager Command and Control Subsystem (CCS), was in charge of general spacecraft sequencing and general health functionality. The second one, the Voyager Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystems (AACS) used a slight variation of the CCS. The third computer was the Voyager's data computer, which was a custom 4-bit CMOS microprocessor.
1980s[edit]
|Year||Picture||Spacecraft||Description|
|1981-2011||Space Shuttle||The Space Shuttles uses 5 identical (for redundancy) 32-bit IBM APA-101S microprocessors. The shuttle system was called the Data Processing System which was composed of Primary Avionics Software System (PASS), that ran in 4 of the computers and the Backup Flight System on the fifth.|
|1989||Galileo||The Galileo spacecraft uses the RCA 1802 CPU.|
1990s[edit]
|Year||Picture||Spacecraft||Description|
|1990||Hubble Space Telescope|
|1991||[[Wikipedia:Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite|UARS]. The UARS spacecraft used the NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer (NSSC-1), although the various instruments probably had embedded microprocessors.]|
|CGRO|
|1992||MSTI-1|
|SAMPEX|
|EUVE|
|TOPEX/Poseidon|
|1993||PoSAT-1|
|1994||MSTI-2|
|Clementine|
|1995||MSTI-3|
|1996||FAST|
|1997||Mars Global Surveyor|
|Mars Sojourner Rover||80C85 CPU.|
|Cassini–Huygens|
|1998||International Space Station|
|SWAS|
|TRACE|
|Deep Space 1|
|1999||Terra|
|WIRE|
|UoSAT-12|
|FUSE|
2000s[edit]
|Year||Picture||Spacecraft||Description|
|2000||Cluster II|
|MightySat-2.1|
|2001||Genesis|
|2002||Aqua|
|RHESSI|
|2003||Spirit Rover|
|Opportunity rover|
|200px||Spitzer Space Telescope|
|ICESat|
|Coriolis|
|2004||Rosetta|
|Aura|
|Swift|
|Gravity Probe B|
|200px||MESSENGER|
|2006||200px||New Horizons|
|STEREO|
|2007||Dawn|
|Phoenix|
2010s[edit]
|Year||Picture||Spacecraft||Description|
|2010||GSAT-4|
|Solar Dynamics Observatory|
|2011||Curiosity rover||The Curiosity Rover uses a pair of identical on-board computers called Rover Computer Element (RCE), each with RAD750 CPU capable of 400 MIPS.|
|2012||Project Morpheus|
|2015||Triana|