NASA has awarded Infleqtion $20 million to advance a mission developing what could become the world’s first quantum gravity sensor in space. The new funding brings NASA’s total investment in the Quantum Gravity Gradiometer Pathfinder mission to $40 million. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory leads the effort. The program now moves into a critical hardware development phase. Engineers will build and test major components before preparing the instrument for a future orbital demonstration. Infleqtion expects the spacecraft to launch into low Earth orbit in 2030. Measuring gravity from orbit The proposed instrument uses ultracold rubidium atoms to detect tiny differences in Earth’s gravitational field. Those measurements could eventually offer a sharper view of changes occurring beneath and across the planet’s surface. Scientists could use future gravity instruments to track shifting groundwater and melting ice. They may also reveal changes in underground natural resources. Existing satellite missions already map Earth’s gravity. NASA’s GRACE and GRACE-FO spacecraft have monitored gravity changes for decades. Quantum sensing could introduce a different measurement approach. Infleqtion will develop the atomic physics package at the center of the new instrument. That system includes the vacuum chamber, lasers, and electronic controls needed to manipulate the atoms. The sensor will cool rubidium atoms to temperatures approaching the pico-Kelvin scale. At those extreme temperatures, researchers can precisely control the atoms for gravity measurements. More from Space See All Dana Anderson, Infleqtion’s chief science officer, said the field has moved beyond simply proving quantum technology works. “We are no longer testing the quantum technology itself,” Anderson said. “We are testing ways to use it in the space environment.” The Pathfinder mission will focus on demonstrating whether that technology can operate under orbital conditions. Testing quantum sensing before launch Infleqtion will now construct an initial sensor head and an electronics engineering unit. Engineers