{"id":33993,"date":"2025-04-19T22:08:13","date_gmt":"2025-04-19T22:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/33993\/"},"modified":"2025-04-19T22:08:13","modified_gmt":"2025-04-19T22:08:13","slug":"how-a-suitcase-sized-nasa-device-could-map-shrinking-aquifers-from-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/33993\/","title":{"rendered":"How a suitcase-sized NASA device could map shrinking aquifers from space"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" <\/a>A map of Earth\u2019s gravity. Red indicates areas of greater gravitational pull, while blue indicates areas that exert less. (Credit: NASA)<\/p>\n

The pull of gravity feels rock steady, yet it wobbles from place to place. Even a single mountain or a shrinking aquifer can tip the scales ever so slightly.<\/p>\n

Now, a new satellite instrument from NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is designed to catch those minute shifts. Coined the Quantum Gravity Gradiometer Pathfinder<\/a> (QGGPf), it packs a physics lab into a box no bigger than a carry-on suitcase and is slated to fly later this decade.<\/p>\n

Inside the device, two clouds of rubidium atoms are chilled to just a fraction above absolute zero. At that temperature, the atoms act more like overlapping waves than tiny balls. As the satellite loops Earth, each atom cloud \u201cfalls\u201d within the chamber. If one cloud accelerates just a fraction faster than the other, the instrument records a stronger local pull.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith atoms, I can guarantee that every measurement will be the same,\u201d said Sheng Wey Chiow, an experimental physicist at JPL. \u201cWe are less sensitive to environmental effects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Current gravity measuring missions such as GRACE-FO<\/a> rely on paired satellites that measure tiny changes in their separation to chart gravity. QGGPf aims to gather comparable details from a single craft approximately 0.3 cubic yards (0.25 cubic meters) in volume and weighing only about 275 pounds (125 kilograms). If the pathfinder works, a full-scale mission could detect features 10 times smaller than today\u2019s systems can resolve.<\/p>\n

Why the data matters<\/p>\n

Gravity maps reveal what lies beneath the surface. Hydrologists watch them to gauge groundwater loss during drought. Geophysicists follow the numbers to see where ice sheets are thinning. Emergency managers study the data for clues that magma is on the move.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could determine the mass of the Himalayas using atoms,\u201d said Jason Hyon, chief technologist for Earth Science at JPL and director of JPL\u2019s Quantum Space Innovation Center. Hyon and colleagues laid out the concepts behind their Quantum Gravity Gradiometer Pathfinder (QGGPf) instrument in a recent paper in EPJ Quantum Technology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Being able to track any changes with a solo, compact satellite would not only trim costs but also let NASA revisit the same spots more often.<\/p>\n

The test-run launch will be a shakedown cruise for several untried technologies, including lasers that steer and measure the atom clouds. JPL is working with AOSense, Infleqtion, Vector Atomic and NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center on the components.<\/p>\n

If all goes well, the approach could be adapted for missions to the Moon or Mars, where mapping underground ice and rock layers is high on science wish lists.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one has tried to fly one of these instruments yet,\u201d said Ben Stray, a postdoctoral researcher at JPL. \u201cWe need to fly it so that we can figure out how well it will operate, and that will allow us to not only advance the quantum gravity gradiometer, but also quantum technology in general.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A map of Earth\u2019s gravity. Red indicates areas of greater gravitational pull, while blue indicates areas that exert…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[19804,19805,19806,70,413,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-33993","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-gravity","9":"tag-qggpf","10":"tag-quantum-gravity-gradiometer-pathfinder","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-space","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114366914346025863","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}