Atomic clock accurate to one second in 30 million years: IonQ wins DARPA order for 125 units

IonQ is scaling up production of its Evergreen-05 compact optical atomic clocks after the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded an additional $28 million contract. Under the terms, the company must build and deliver 125 units to U.S. government customers.

The device was developed under DARPA's It's About Time program, which aims to create autonomous timekeeping systems that do not rely on satellite navigation. Such clocks are needed for radars, secure communications links, and high-precision navigation and geolocation, particularly when GPS signals are unavailable or deliberately jammed.

The key advantage of Evergreen-05 is its combination of high accuracy and compact size. The unit fits into a chassis of about five liters, roughly the size of a shoebox, while conventional laboratory optical atomic clocks typically occupy full equipment racks. Despite the small footprint, the system maintains synchronization stability of 50 femtoseconds per second and can hold accuracy within nanoseconds for ten days without an external time reference. IonQ claims this translates to an accumulated error of less than one second over roughly 30 million years.

Engineers have also prepared the device for operation outside laboratories: the design supports deployment on ground vehicles, ships, and airborne platforms.

To fulfill the new order, IonQ will invest an additional $15 million in production expansion. The funds will go toward dedicated manufacturing facilities, equipment purchases, test infrastructure, and new hires. The company expects to move from limited output to full-scale series production of such systems.

The Evergreen-05 technology came to IonQ through its 2025 acquisition of startup Vector Atomic. The clock development has been funded by DARPA since 2019 under the Robust Optical Clock Network program, and the new contract represents the next step toward practical deployment.