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>Big complex hardware is a no-no for true real-time.

SpaceX uses x86 processors for their rockets. That small drone copter NASA put on Mars uses "big-ish" ARM cores that can probably run older versions of Android.

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Does everything runs on those CPUs though? Hard realtime control is often done on much simpler MCU at the lowest level, with oversight/planning for a high level system....

In short, no. For Ingenuity (the Mars2020 helicopter) the flight computer runs on pair of hard-realtime Cortex R5 MCUs paired with a FPGA. The non-realtime Snapdragon SoC handles navigation/image processing duties.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26907669

That's basically what I expected, thanks.

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