C3D CUBESAT CAMERA CAPTURES COLD ATOMS IMAGE FOR CASPA COLLABORATION PROJECT

17/05/17

A cold atom cloud suspended in a magneto optical trap (MOT) has been successfully imaged by XCAM’s C3D CubeSat camera system. The captured image shows the cold atom cloud as the bright spot at the centre of the image, produced using the University of Birmingham’s miniature MOT system, with XCAM engineers working alongside a team from the UK National Quantum Technology Hub in Sensors and Metrology. The cold atom cloud is formed from rubidium atoms held within a vacuum chamber using a combination of lasers and magnetic fields to cool and trap the atoms. This represents an initial milestone for collaborators of the Cold Atom Space Payload (CASPA) project, led by Teledyne e2v, which aims to reduce the size, weight and power of such a system such that it is compatible as a 6U CubeSat payload.

For more information read our previous post about the CASPA project.

(Image courtesy of University of Birmingham)