Big Brains on a Little Chip!

The littlest robot yet If you know anything about the history of computers, you know that they are getting smaller and smaller. Just 20 or 30 years ago, it would take a whole big room to hold a computer with the power of the one you use to look at sites on the Internet.

Spacecraft are getting smaller and smaller too. The same new technology that lets computers be so small can be used to make robotic spacecraft very small. We call them robotic spacecraft because they don't carry any people. We send them off to do our work, while we stay home. As long as the spacecraft don't have to carry people, they can be very tiny and still do lots of useful work, traveling far from Earth and finding out all sorts of interesting things about other planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and space.

Why do we want spacecraft to be so small?

To answer that, which of these boys is easier to lift?

Trying to launch a big boy Trying to launch a small boy
Just as a lighter load is easier to lift, a small spacecraft is easier than a big one to boost out of Earth's gravity and send on its way to its destination. That means we can use less fuel and a smaller rocket. Usually, the smaller the spacecraft, the less money it costs to build, launch, and operate, so we can afford do even more space missions.

Maybe spacecraft will never be quite as small as the spacecraft in our maze, but soon the entire computer system for a spacecraft will fit on a chip the size of our tiniest maze.

As part of NASA's "X2000" program, engineers at the Center for Integrated Space Microsystems at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are working to stuff more and more of the needed functions for a spacecraft into one little chip.

See how tiny this spacecraft chip is beside other kinds of chips you may be familiar with:

Chips ahoy!

Here are some of the spacecraft jobs this tiny little chip will do:

    Guidance and navigation: Figure out where the spacecraft is and keep it pointed in the right direction.

    Communications: Receive messages and instructions from Earth and send data back to Earth.

    Power: Control the use of electrical power, charging of batteries, etc.

    Computer: Run all the programs that tell other elements of the spacecraft what to do, prepare the measurement data and images (if a camera is onboard) for sending back to Earth, and many other jobs.

This mini-chip technology will be used on several spacecraft, including missions going to Pluto, Europa (a moon of Jupiter), the Sun, Comet Tempel 1, and Mars.

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