TÜBİTAK National Metrology Institute (UME); in accordance with the understanding of TÜBİTAK for producing pioneering, national and domestic alternatives in every field, has succeeded to produce the first laboratory type national and domestic Rubidium-based atomic clock to be used in positioning satellites, as a result of the studies initiated entirely with its own means..
A cooperation protocol between the Turkish Space Agency and TÜBİTAK UME, which includes the work that can be performed for the agency within the framework of the capabilities of the institute, including the qualification of the atomic clock for space, was signed on September 28, 2020.
Mehmet Fatih KAÇIR, Deputy Minister of Industry and Technology also participated at the ceremony in which Serdar Huseyin Yildirim, Turkish Space Agency President and Dr. Mustafa ÇETİNTAŞ, TÜBİTAK UME Director signed the protocol.
In the next step, this atomic clock is planned to be transformed into a suitable form for the space environment, and then to be sent to space and be tested in the real space environment. The knowledge, trained staff and production capacity that will be obtained in this way will make a very important contribution to our country's efforts to establish a domestic and national positioning system.
Since the atomic clock, which will be qualified for space with domestic and national facilities, will cost incomparably cheap compared to the samples to be bought from abroad, it will also provide a great benefit to our country in terms of cost. In fact, since it is a critical technology, export opportunities may arise and it may be able to provide foreign currency inflow to our country in this field.
In addition, TÜBİTAK UME has taken the necessary steps to invest in the future of our country and started the Strontium-based optical atomic clock project, which is a very important value for domestic and national positioning system.
Optical atomic clocks, which are the latest technology in time measurements, have the potential to produce time information at least a hundred times more accurate than the existing atomic clocks. The Sr optical lattice atomic clock to be developed by TÜBİTAK UME is aimed to measure with an accuracy of less than 1 second in 1 billion years. Thanks to the use of the time information of the ground stations equipped with such clocks for national positioning systems, the national positioning system will have the opportunity to obtain much more accurate position information.
On the other hand, the CGPM (General Conference on Weights and Measures) is expected to replace the definition of time unit second with a new definition based on optical frequency standards with accuracies one hundred times better than the accuracy of existing atomic clocks. This will make the Strontium-based optical atomic clock to be developed by TÜBİTAK UME much more valuable for the adaptation of our country to the redefinition of the time unit.
With the development of optical atomic clocks, the current accuracy of our country's national time scale will be increased more than a hundred times. The use of optical clocks is predicted to be a pioneer in many areas such as redefinition of the second and fundamental physical constants, positioning (navigation), rapid communication, electronic signature, new generation radar systems, development of engineering products, relativistic geodesy, quantum computing and so on.