NASA selects SiFive and makes RISC-V the go-to ecosystem for future missions
The article (nor the product page for the X280) doesn't say whether these chips are radiation hardened, or whether NASA is now more comfortable with software solutions to the difficulties of reliable computation in space.If the latter, that seems (to a layperson) quite exciting, since more local processing capabilities will hopefully lead to more efficient use of the very limited radio bandwidth these missions have available at such vast distances.