This work is supported by the DLR Space Administration with funds provided by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) under grant numbers DLR 50WM1131-1137, 50WM0940 and 50WM1240. W.P.S. thanks Texas A&M University for a Faculty Fellowship at the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study at Texas A&M University and Texas A&M AgriLife for support for this work. The research of the IQST is financed partially by the Ministry of Science, Research and Arts Baden-Württemberg. N.G. acknowledges funding from Niedersächsisches Vorab through the Quantum- and Nano-Metrology (QUANOMET) initiative within the project QT3. W.H. acknowledges funding from Niedersächsisches Vorab through the project Foundations of Physics and Metrology project. R.C. is a recipient of DAAD (Procope action and mobility scholarship) and a member of the IP@Leibniz programme, which is supported by LU Hanover. S.T.S. is grateful for non-monetary support from DLR MORABA before, during and after the MAIUS-1 launch. We thank E. Kajari and M. Eckardt for the chip model code and A. Roura and W. Zeller for their input. We thank C. Spindeldreier and H. Blume from IMS Hanover for FPGA software development. We acknowledge the contributions of PTB Brunswick and LNQE Hanover towards fabricating the atom chip. We thank ESRANGE Kiruna and DLR MORABA Oberpfaffenhofen for assistance during the test and launch campaign.

Reviewer information

Nature thanks L. Liu and the other anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.