NASA plans to launch atomic clocks into extraterrestrial orbit
The second launch of the super-heavy launch vehicle Falcon Heavy will launch an atomic clock into extraterrestrial orbit commissioned by NASA, which will enable space navigation, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Livescience reports this.
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According to the report, the Falcon Heavy rocket is capable of launching 64 tons of cargo into space, far beyond the Earth's orbit. The next launch is scheduled for June. There will be a clock on board that will make space navigation possible, which will make flying easier.
The so-called Deep Space Atomic Clock (DSAC) is much smaller than Earth-bound atomic clocks, much more accurate than others, and more resistant to stress and space travel than any clock ever created.
According to NASA, no more than 2 nanoseconds (2 billion per second) are expected to be lost over the course of a day.
In an email, Andrew Goode, a spokesman for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the first DSAC will depart with the second Falcon Heavy launch, scheduled for June.
Atomic clock is the most powerful time measuring device that people have ever created. Clocks work by monitoring atoms, such as radiation in space, changes in light and color emission, and the like. According to the developers, such atomic clocks on Earth can operate for billions of years.
Timing is extremely important. A global positioning system (GPS) satellite network will not work without accurate measurements of the time it takes for radio signals to bounce. And spacecraft beyond Earth's orbit rely on Earth-linked atomic clocks and radio signals to pinpoint their location in space and make course adjustments.
Every mission deep in space that corrects course must send signals to ground stations on Earth. These ground stations rely on atomic clocks to measure how long those signals took to travel so they can find the spacecraft's location in the vast vacuum, then the Earth re-broadcasts the processed data back to the spacecraft.
A spacecraft equipped with DSAC, according to NASA, will be able to calculate time without waiting for measurements from Earth - allowing it to correct its course or perform scientific experiments without pause. The purpose of DSAC is to allow spacecraft to make accurate time measurements on board the spacecraft without waiting for information from Earth.
After launch, DSAC will undergo testing for about a year to check the device's performance.
Earlier, on the night of February 7, SpaceX conducted the first launch of the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral in Florida, two of the three first stage boosters successfully simultaneously landed on the landing pads.
NASA plans to launch an atomic clock into extraterrestrial orbit.