Upgrades and Advanced Capabilities for NASA’s Cold Atom Lab

The long-term production and control of exotic quantum states, such as Bose-Einstein Condensates, has been recently extended from terrestrial to space laboratories. The microgravity environment allows researchers to observe and interact with these macroscopic quantum phenomena in the essentially limitless free-fall of space to facilitate unprecedented fundamental physics investigations. Such space studies of interacting ultracold quantum gases have been pursued with NASA's multi-user Cold Atom Lab (CAL) facility, which has operated onboard the International Space Station since its launch in 2018. In addition to the toolbox of capabilities originally built into CAL, near-term instrument upgrades are planned to enable novel science and precision measurements. This poster discusses the addition of a mesoscopic atom-chip-based trap and presents the compatibility tests for an optical dipole trap as potential upgrades to the CAL instrument. We will also discuss how these implementations can further enhance the association of weakly-bound diatomic molecules from rubidium and/or potassium atomic mixtures for space-enabled studies of ultracold molecules.