Launching an
atomic clock is a "critical step toward enabling spacecraft to safely navigate themselves in deep space", it stressed, adding that there will be no need for time-consuming process of receiving directions from Earth.
Todd Ely, principal investigator for the project, said: "The goal of the space experiment is to put the Deep Space
Atomic Clock in the context of an operating spacecraft - complete with the things that affect the stability and accuracy of a clock - and see if it performs at the level we think it will: with orders of magnitude more stability than existing space clocks."
Atomic clocks tell time with astonishing precision.
But there are some
atomic clocks that break a single second into such tiny parts that they can actually detect a minuscule shift in the speed of time.
The phrase signals that the
atomic clocks - that provide locational data - in the six navigation satellites are functioning normally.
Although the concept of an
atomic clock was seemingly simple, its implementation was exceedingly difficult, particularly with the technology that existed in the 1940s.
Since Essen's pioneering work, the accuracy of
atomic clocks has improved by a factor of 10 or so every decade.
On Thursday, the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colo., introduced NIST F-2, its latest
atomic clock, three times more accurate than NIST F-1.
Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has launched a new
atomic clock, called NIST-F2, which will serve as the new US time standard, and will neither gain nor lose one second in about 300 million years.
It's part clock, part scale: A newly developed
atomic clock measures time based on the mass of a single atom.
Specifically, they were debating whether to abolish the leap second, which scientists occasionally add to the
atomic clock to sync it up with Earth's rotation.
Just push one of the buttons and you are synchronized with the
atomic clock in Colorado, and the hands of the watch move to the exact time position.
The
atomic clock is twice as accurate as any similar device made previously.
