It has come to light that the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is currently involved in developing rubidium-based, high-precision atomic clocks meant to be used on the next series of its navigation satellites. Such timepieces use electronic transition frequency as their frequency standard, which translates into extremely accurate timekeeping.
The chairman of ISRO, A.S. Kiran Kumar has said regarding the matter that the agency is crafting a seven-satellite regional navigation constellation in India. The four that are already up make use of European atomic clocks. Since the Indian satellites are aimed towards showing the exact position and time of persons and objects on earth for civil and military purposes, they need to possess atomic clocks in order to keep extremely accurate time as they send signals.
Accordant to a report by The Hindu, ISRO’s Space Applications Centre in Ahmadabad is now involved in the process of developing prototypes of the needed atomic clocks. This information was relayed by Kumar during a recently organized Metrology Society event in Bangaluru.
He furthermore admitted that the ISRO is still to make ‘qualified and flight-worthy versions’ of atomic clocks, but he did mention that the country’s next-gen navigation satellites will all carry our own clocks. After a lifetime of 10 years, the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System 1 series will be up for replacement, and that’s the best opportunity for ISRO to embed its own atomic clocks into the satellites.
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The most important factors that need to be kept in mid during the building of these atomic clocks are that they should be compact and fuel-efficient in space. Let us now see how long it takes for ISRO to come up with its own device.