NASA astronaut Jessica Meir was spotted aboard the International Space Station on May 8, 2026, doing what any responsible homeowner would do: inspecting optical fibers and installing hardware updates for the agency’s Cold Atom Lab (CAL). Because even a device that chills atoms to temperatures colder than anything in the known universe occasionally needs a good tweaking.
CAL, which is about the size of a minifridge (and presumably doesn't hold leftover space pizza), is operated from Earth and chills atoms to below minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 273.15 degrees Celsius). That's so close to absolute zero that atoms give up being individual particles and form a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) - a fifth state of matter that makes solids, liquids, gases, and plasma look like amateurs. In this state, scientists can watch quantum properties like wave-particle duality with the naked eye, which is about as trippy as physics gets without hallucinogens.
The lab is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, designed and built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and sponsored by the Biological and Physical Sciences (BPS) division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The BPS division uses space environments to conduct investigations that are not possible on Earth, because apparently, Earth is just too mainstream for extreme science. Studying biological and physical phenomena under extreme conditions helps researchers advance fundamental scientific knowledge needed to go farther and stay longer in space, while also benefiting life on Earth - because what's good for atoms is good for us.