English News in Levels

NASA's Upgraded Space Station Quantum Lab Creates Matter Colder Than the Known Universe

NASA's Cold Atom Laboratory aboard the International Space Station has been fully upgraded and restarted after receiving its final hardware module in April 2026, delivered by the Northrop Grumman NG-24 resupply mission. The upgrade allows the lab to create Bose-Einstein condensates five times larger than before, enabling new precision tests of dark matter and Einstein's equivalence principle in microgravity. No further hardware deliveries are planned before the ISS is expected to retire around 2030.