[JILL SEUBERT] Traditionally, the way we navigate
with spacecraft in deep space
is we send a signal from the Earth,
goes all the way out to the spacecraft
where it’s turned around and then
rebroadcast back to the Earth.
And we’re measuring changes in the amount of time
that it takes that signal to go from the Earth
to the spacecraft and back again,
in order to determine where the spacecraft is
and where it’s headed
to make sure that it will get to its destination successfully.
What the Deep Space Atomic Clock would allow is for us to have
a very, very stable frequency source onboard the spacecraft.
So now we could either, we could send these signals
from the Earth to the spacecraft
and do the navigation onboard
or we can send a signal simply from the spacecraft
to the Earth and then cut out half of that signal.
Once we get this clock in space
and we demonstrate its capability in space,
I’m excited to see what we can do with it next.
You know, as the navigator, as the person who will in the end
be benefiting from this clock, it really can make
my job easier in a lot of ways.
I can get more data. I can get higher quality data.
[TODD ELY] Traditionally when we navigate in deep space
we use atomic clocks but we use them
on the ground and the tracking stations that we use
to determine the position of the spacecraft in space.
DSAC, the Deep Space Atomic Clock,
takes the technology we have
in our ground atomic clocks and packages it up into a small
spacecraft-ready-size of device
and is, we believe is going to be able to deliver
the same kind of precision and accuracy
that we get on the ground today.
And so that will open up new ways
in which we can navigate in deep space.
For future human exploration of the solar system
I think that’s going to be critical,
making it safer and more robust
to get out there and explore.