For The First Time, Scientists Have Performed Atom Interferometry in Space - ScienceAlert

To make some of the most precise measurements we can of the world around us, scientists tend to go small - right down to the atomic scale, using a technique called atom interferometry.

Now, for the first time, scientists have performed this kind of measurement in space, using a sounding rocket specially designed to carry science payloads into low-Earth space.

"We have established the technological basis for atom interferometry on board of a sounding rocket and demonstrated that such experiments are not only possible on Earth, but also in space," said physicist Patrick Windpassinger of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany.

This is an ideal starting point for interferometry, because the atoms are all behaving identically, and the team achieved the creation of a Bose-Einstein condensate in space for the first time using their sounding rocket in 2017, with a gas of rubidium atoms.

"For us, this ultracold ensemble represented a very promising starting point for atom interferometry," Windpassinger said.

Once again, the researchers created their rubidium Bose-Einstein condensate, but this time they used lasers to irradiate the gas, causing the atoms to separate, then come back together in superposition.