ICE on board the Zero-G plane at the 64th CNES flight campaign

The ICE team participated in the 64th flight campaign of CNES (French space agency) aboard the Airbus A310 ZERO-G in March 2023. The aircraft operated by Novespace performs parabolic flights to reproduce the conditions of microgravity as encountered in space. The goal of this flight campaign for the team was to demonstrate the production of clouds of ultra-cold rubidium atoms using only optical methods. Being able to create such samples of ultra-cold atoms is a prerequisite for high precision measurements using atom interferometry in space.