Cold Atom Lab Unloading ISS

Astronaut Christina Koch unloads new hardware for the Cold Atom Lab aboard the International Space Station the week of Dec. 9, 2020.

The Cold Atom Laboratory launched to the space station on May 21, 2018, aboard a Northrop Grumman (formerly Orbital ATK) Cygnus spacecraft from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Designed and built at JPL, the Cold Atom Lab is sponsored by the International Space Station Program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, and the Space Life and Physical Sciences Research and Applications (SLPSRA) Division of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Exploring the 5th-state of Matter

25 years ago, scientists on Earth first produced a fifth state of matter with properties totally unlike solids, liquids, gases, and plasmas. The achievement garnered a Nobel Prize for those scientists and changed the field of physics.

In 2018, NASA's Cold Atom Lab became the first facility to produce that fifth state of matter, called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), in Earth’s orbit. The Cold Atom Lab lowers atoms to ultracold temperatures in order to study their properties in ways not possible on Earth.

Why do this in space? Chilling atoms is the only way to produce a BEC. Ultracold atom facilities in space should be able to reach colder temperatures than labs on Earth. Additionally, scientists produce BECs in a vacuum, so on Earth the atoms are pulled down by gravity and fall quickly toward the floor. This movement typically limits observation times to less than a second without the help of magnetic or optical fields that influence the atoms’ behaviors. In microgravity, BEC's can float, providing longer observation times.

Why does it matter? BECs serve as a valuable tool for scientists studying quantum physics. BECs collectively exhibit properties typically displayed only by individual atoms, making those microscopic characteristics visible at a much larger scale. This study can provide insight into fundamental laws of quantum mechanics and could support the development of quantum technologies such as ultraprecise sensing and timekeeping.