This week, the world has looked on with awe as the New Horizons probe sent back the first ever detailed pictures of Pluto. Those images weren’t taken using the latest technology, though; New Horizons launched in January 2006, and was obviously designed and built even earlier.
So the gear inside is a little more primitive than what you’d put in a probe today. Case in point: the CPU powering the mission is a 32-bit MIPS R3000 processor. The same one used in the Sony PlayStation (via The Verge).
Advertisement
Not the PS2. The original PlayStation. Basic and low-fi by even 2005 standards, sure, but hey, it worked! And is still working, nearly a decade on, despite the best efforts of (quite literally) time and space.