[boothby]

From the article:

> At low temperatures, however, electrons become trapped and cannot move, a phenomenon known as freeze-out.

This is a well-known phenomenon. And while you're right that keeping something cool in space requires engineering, keeping things warm in space is also challenging and may require energy expenditure that's otherwise wasteful.

For an artificial example, say you want to put a beacon on an asteroid that emits a signal once a day. You don't want to burn energy keeping the electronics alive or, the beacon won't last very long. You'd like it to sleep without using power, and wake up without needing to warm up. And that means operating at cryogenic temperature.

And of course, chips that work in cryogenic environments are also useful in terrestrial contexts -- we love stuffing refrigerators full of exciting circuitry where I work.