How a miniaturized atomic clock could revolutionize space exploration | Jill Seubert

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2020

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ask any deep space navigator like Jill Seubert what makes steering a spacecraft so difficult, and they'll tell you it's all about the timing; a split-second can decide a mission's success or failure. So what do you do when a spacecraft is bad at telling time? You get it a clock -- an atomic clock, to be precise. Let Seubert whisk you away with the revolutionary potential of a future where you could receive stellar, GPS-like directions -- no matter where you are in the universe.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This TED Talk features deep space atomic clock navigation engineer Jill Subbert, recorded live at TEDx, UCLA, 2019.
0:11.2	Six months ago, I watched with bated breath as NASA's Insight lander descended towards the surface of Mars.
0:21.4	200 meters, 80 meters, 60, 40, 20, 17 meters.
0:28.9	Receiving confirmation of successful touchdown
0:31.8	was one of the most ecstatic moments of my life.
0:36.2	And hearing that news was possible because of two small
0:40.8	cubesets that went along to Mars with Insight. Those two cube sets essentially live-streamed
0:49.4	Insights telemetry back to Earth so that we could watch in near real time as that insight lander went
0:56.2	screaming towards the surface of the red planet, hitting the atmosphere of Mars at a top speed of about
1:03.1	12,000 miles per hour. Now that event was live streamed to us from over 90 million miles away.
1:12.0	It was live-streamed from Mars.
1:16.5	Meanwhile, the two Voyager spacecraft,
1:20.1	now these are these two almost unbelievably intrepid explorers.
1:24.8	They were launched the same year that all of us here were being introduced to
1:29.1	Han Solo for the first time. And they are still sending back data from interstellar space over 40 years
1:36.7	later. We are sending more spacecraft further into deep space than ever before. But every one of those spacecraft out there
1:47.0	depends on its navigation being performed right here at Earth
1:52.0	to tell it where it is, and far more importantly, where it is going.
1:56.0	And we have to do that navigation here on Earth for one simple reason.
2:03.9	Spacecraft are really bad at telling the time.
2:10.1	But if we can change that, we can revolutionize the way we explore deep space.
2:16.0	Now, I am a deep space navigator, and I know you're probably thinking, what is that job?
	...

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