Cold Atom Lab Aboard Space Station Gets Chilly Upgrade

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have switched on the newly upgraded Cold Atom Lab, a one-of-a-kind facility designed to improve how scientists explore the fundamental workings of matter and develop new quantum technologies. By leveraging microgravity in space, the lab can accomplish cutting-edge science impossible to do anywhere else.

About the size of a minifridge and operated from Earth, the Cold Atom Lab chills atoms to temperatures below minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 237 degrees Celsius). At this extreme cold, atoms form a Bose‑Einstein condensate, a large quantum object whose wave-like behavior can grow larger in low Earth orbit.

"At the coldest temperatures, matter behaves drastically different from anything we have experienced," said Jason Williams, project scientist for Cold Atom Lab at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which built the facility.

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