NASA’s Earth Orbiting Cold Atom Lab

The Cold Atom Lab (CAL) launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in May 2018, and has been operating since that time as the world’s first multi-user facility for the study of ultra-cold quantum gases in space. The unique microgravity environment of the ISS is utilized with CAL by a national group of principal investigators to achieve sub-nanokelvin temperature gases, to study and utilize their quantum properties in an environment free from the perturbing force of gravity, and to observe and interact with these gases in the essentially limitless free-fall of orbit. In addition to the toolbox of capabilities originally built into CAL, an upgrade in 2020 enabled the study of atom interferometry in orbit, a 2021 upgrade and repair facilitated investigations of the interactions between mixtures of ⁸⁷Rb, ³⁹K, and ⁴¹K and dual species (⁸⁷Rb & ^39,41K) atom interferometry. Planning is ongoing for a near-term upgrade to further enable novel science with ultracold quantum gases in space. This poster discusses the up to date microgravity enabled quantum gas research explored with CAL that has broad applications in fundamental physics and precision measurements.



This research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.