>>13198638>Will the sucsess of a commercial CPU have NASA try and use additional commercial CPUs in future designs? Are they better off having a redundant CPU instead of going back to hardened microchips?Just my opinions here:
I feel it will depend on the mission. Oppy got a tried-and-true CPU with rad-hardened space grade FPGAs because it was for a specific mission that was expensive and had a specific goal. Previous rovers were mostly in the same arena, and the gamble of using an off-the-shelf CPU/electronics wasn't worth it.
Ingy is/was a tech demo. If it died on its first flight attempt, no one would really be in trouble. It was a last minute addon (last minute for space timelines) to a rover that was already under a time crunch. Not only did the helicopter need to be insanely light, but it needed to have fast processing. Modern SoCs are the only thing that fit that criteria, so it was almost mandatory they use them.
Going forward, I don't see why it shouldn't be attempted more. Of course, this will depend on not only how well Ingy fairs (which just recently had issues on its 6th flight), and how critical future missions are.
I could see robots using a more modern system like Ingy is sporting, but only as a test system with some real horsepower. It would still have the safe CPU as the main system, but run the cool stuff on the modern hardware.
It would have been interesting to see Oppy running on modern equipment. I can guarantee you we could cover much larger distances with advanced "AI" driving like it has now. But any time you launch a multi-million dollar thing into space, you want to absolutely be certain it will work. Unless you're Boeing.
