Atomic clocks produced in the US that drift by only one second in 30 million years

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has provided substantial funding to scale up production of compact, ultra-precise atomic clocks. According to ixbt.com, IonQ received an additional $28 million contract to launch mass production of optical atomic clocks called Evergreen-05. Ixbt.com reports this. reports this.

The project is being carried out under the It's About Time program, a DARPA initiative. Its main goal is to create autonomous, high-precision synchronization systems that do not depend on satellite navigation. Such devices are crucial for radar and communications systems in environments where GPS signals are unavailable or deliberately jammed.

Technical capabilities of the Evergreen-05 clocks

The new device's main advantage is the combination of extreme precision and compact size. It fits into a housing with a volume of just five liters—about the size of a shoebox. By comparison, classic laboratory optical atomic clocks typically occupy an entire equipment rack.

Despite its small size, the system provides synchronization stability at the level of 50 femtoseconds per second. It can also maintain accuracy down to nanoseconds for ten days without relying on an external time source. According to IonQ, this precision corresponds to accumulating an error of just one second over approximately 30 million years.

Plans to scale up production

Engineers have prepared the timing device for use outside the laboratory, with a design intended for deployment on land vehicles, ships and airborne platforms. To fulfill the new order, IonQ will invest an additional $15 million in expanding production.

The allocated funds will be used to construct specialized manufacturing facilities, purchase equipment, create testing infrastructure and hire new employees. The company plans to move from limited production to full-scale mass production of such systems.

It has been reported that the Evergreen-05 technology came to IonQ in 2025 through its acquisition of the Vector Atomic startup. DARPA has funded the development of these clocks since 2019, and the new contract marks another important step toward putting them into practical use.