NASA New Horizons Pluto [PHOTOS] Used Sony PlayStation Technology?

NASA's New Horizons space probe is a fitting name for the probe that has travelled from Earth all the way to the former planet Pluto to give us some screenshots of the celestial ice ball. For the first time in history of humanity, we see the grooves and craters of Pluto up close and personal. Now with such beautiful shots you'd think the New Horizons has some of the most advanced technology NASA could buy but the truth is some of the hardware inside it is pretty old. As a matter of fact, its CPU, the MIPS R3000 processor, is the same one used inside our old Sony PlayStations.

That's right. The tech that allowed you to play Final Fantasy 7 and Crash Bandicoot is in space showing us what the ends of our universe looks like. Of course, the only difference between the MIPS R3000 inside your old Playstation and the one we've sent up to space is that the one inside the probe is built to survive being blasted with radiation.

Send the MIPS inside your Playstation into space after you finish playing Mortal Kombat III and that thing is getting fried.

NASA does have a reason why they decided to go with an older piece of tech instead of something newer. According to them, they want a piece of technology that's tried and true instead of something fast. The old tech is always more reliable and newer stuff just has not been properly tested yet. NASA talked about using older technology back in 2014 when they said the inside of the Orion, the vehicle they hope will one day help bring men and women to Mars, uses technology from 2002.

"Compared to the [Intel] Core i5 in your laptop, it's much slower – much less powerful," Matt Lemke, NASA's deputy manager, told Computer World. "It's probably not any faster than your smartphone. But it's not about the speed as much as the ruggedness and the reliability. I just need to make sure it will always work."