NASA tests AI space chip 500x more powerful than current spacecraft processors

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory shared on 15 May 2026 that its new High Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC) processor is performing as designed in early testing — and is running at roughly 500 times the performance of the radiation-hardened chips currently flying.

Small enough to fit in the palm of a hand, the HPSC packs a full system-on-a-chip and is built by Microchip Technology under a commercial partnership with JPL. The point isn’t raw speed for its own sake: it is on-board AI. With local intelligence, a probe at Saturn or Mars can react to a sudden plume, a sensor glitch, or a science opportunity in seconds rather than waiting tens of minutes for an Earth round-trip.

JPL began testing in February; once certified for spaceflight the processor will be slotted into Earth orbiters, planetary rovers, crewed habitats, and deep-space spacecraft. It is one of the most consequential infrastructure upgrades NASA has made to its spacecraft computing stack in two decades.

Sources: NASA JPL · ScienceDaily · Tom’s Hardware