NASA's Perseverance rover, which recently made history landing on the surface of Mars, is powered by the same processor used in an iMac more than 23 years old.
As reported by NewScientist (via Gizmodo), the rover includes the PowerPC 750 processor, the same chip used in the G3 iMac in 1998.
The main chipset is the same; however, there are differences between the version of the processor shipped in a consumer computer and the one exploring space. The processor in the rover is built to withstand temperatures between -67 and 257 degrees Fahrenheit (−55 and 125 degrees Celsius) and comes with an added $200,000 price tag.
The PowerPC 750 processor was ahead of the game for its time, featuring a single-core, 233MHz processor, 6 million transistors (compared to today's 16 billion in a single chip), and based on 32-bit architecture.
Apple used PowerPC chips in Mac computers until it transitioned to Intel in 2005. Right now, Apple's going through a similar change, moving away from Intel to deploy its own custom Apple silicon in Macs.
NASA has shared three incredible photos shot on the iPhone 17 Pro Max by astronauts during the Artemis II mission to the Moon.
Shot on iPhone 17 Pro Max (Wiseman)
In February, NASA announced that the iPhone had been fully qualified for extended use in orbit, with reports indicating that each of the four crew members aboard the Orion are equipped with an iPhone 17 Pro Max for personal photos...
Saturday April 11, 2026 8:17 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
As we previously reported, astronauts aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft used the iPhone 17 Pro Max to take selfies of themselves with the Earth in the background during the Artemis II mission around the far side of the Moon last week.
Now that the crew members have safely returned to Earth, Apple's CEO Tim Cook and marketing chief Greg Joswiak have both turned to social media to congratulate...
A source said to be familiar with Apple's supply chain today revealed the color options Apple is planning for the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, and the upcoming foldable iPhone.
Image via Macworld.
The information comes from Macworld, which says the signature new color for this year's Pro models will be Dark Cherry, a deep wine-like red. While other sources had previously reported on a...
Because super-reliability is more important than compute power. The G3 is also used e.g. as mission computer in fighter jets. The feature is called fail-safe
if a more than two decade old processor is good enough to find out evidence of extraterrestrial past life, then I got no excuse to be buying anything that [S]Tosser[/S] Prosser is predicting anytime soon
It's also radiation hardened, which is where the price tag comes from (and also the most important thing setting it aside from the actual PowerPC 750 found in the iMac G3)
Anything launched into space has typically been in a multiple years long project, sometimes decade(s) long. It also usually costs a gazillion dollars.
What matters most is reliability and predictability... especially for something going millions (or billions) of miles away and not coming back that we can’t send astronauts to physically fix.
Most of the closed loop systems aboard aircraft, spacecraft, submarines, weapons and similar applications have very old, proven, but mundane processors and operating systems aboard... the last thing you want is “the new kid on the block” when the stakes are so high. Although parts of it are modernized as needed, the ECU in a typical car has the processing power no more than a Texas Instruments calculator... some of the software in Boeing and Airbus jets is virtually unchanged since the 1980s as well.
