The DSAC before launch. Image: General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems
ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, future tech, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs.
In 2019, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) launched an instrument known as the Deep Space Atomic Clock (DSAC) into orbit to conduct the first space-based demonstration of this next-generation technology, which has a dizzying range of future applications. Since the launch, DSAC has lived up to expectations by achieving a timekeeping stability that is an “order of magnitude better than existing space clocks,” despite the many challenges of the outer space environment, reports the study.“Over the last few years, we've been analyzing data, listening to it, and watching it, so it's been steady, hard work,” said Eric Burt, an atomic clock physicist at JPL and lead author of the new study, in a call. “But now, culminating in this announcement, it's also very, very exciting.”Atomic clocks use the excited states of atoms to count seconds, and they are by far the most precise timekeeping devices ever made. Many spacecraft already carry these advanced clocks to perform complex logistical calculations, such as the satellites of the Global Positioning System (GPS) constellation. Space missions that travel to other planets or voyage into the depths of the solar system rely on atomic clocks on Earth to provide them with updated time measurements, which is a value they need to calculate their position in space.All of the atomic clocks that are currently operating in space use atomic beams or gas cells to trap the time-keeping atoms into a walled-in area. These clocks are extremely precise on short-term timescales, maintaining an error level of no more than one billionth of a second hour-to-hour, but the atoms bouncing off the walls cause this timekeeping stability to “drift.”
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