This Atomic Clock Will Transform Deep Space Exploration
It was 2:30 in the morning when astronautical engineer Todd Ely watched as a little atomic clock—the size of a four-slice toaster—was launched into space on a satellite attached to one of the most powerful rockets in the world. Ely and Burt are two leaders of the Deep Space Atomic Clock project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and in September—more than two years after the clock’s deployment into low Earth orbit—the clock’s satellite was powered off, marking the end of its first mission. “A robust onboard navigation system is going to be a fundamental component to human exploration beyond Earth,” says Ely, the project’s principal investigator. “And our clock can play a role in that.” Atomic clocks, like every other kind, start with an oscillator: something that vibrates. “At this rate, the time over which this clock would lose a second is 1,000 years,” says Burt.
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The most accurate clock in the universe[1]- Chinadaily.com.cn