As someone who has worked on Satellite hardware, I can give some insight on why this is true.
Electronic hardware needs to be Rad Hardened. This is a technique of shielding the boards and CPU's from radiation. A lot of the new stuff has just never been put through this process.
In Space, power is king. If a CPU can do every calculation you require from it, the one that takes the least amount of power is the best choice, regardless of age. The older Motorola CPU's fit this bill nicely.
I have been out of the government game for 6 years now, so not sure what they do today. But when I was working on a program just 6 years ago, with a 140 million dollar budget, we used 10 year old CPU's. Not because we didn't have any money or that government moved slow, but because out of all the CPU's on the market, they fit the requirement best.
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