Few technologies are more exacting than that of designing and running space probes.
A trajectory error as small as one inch per mile, for instance, can result in missing the target by tens of thousands of miles. Linux at NASA With their long history of mainframe-based computing, NASA scientists were quick to spot the benefits of Linux. The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, for example, uses Linux with its airborne Scanning Radar Altimeter to study hurricanes. NASA's Beowulf-class clustered computing project has also made use of Linux for several years. When you are two billion miles from earth, you can't just pop out to a hardware store to get a spare part.