A tiny satellite is using a Raspberry Pi Zero as its flight computer in what is believed to a be a first-of-its-kind experiment.

In December, after eight years of planning, undergraduate students from Utah State University (USU) who made the tiny Get Away Special Passive Attitude Control Satellite (GASPACS) watched NASA launch Pi Zero-powered CubeSat into space. 

One of the goals of the project was to see if inexpensive, commercial off- the-shelf (COTS) hardware like the Pi Zero would be up to the task of space travel.