NASA is ready to take the next step in sending a Colorado company’s quantum technology into space.

The federal space agency awarded Infleqtion another $20 million to develop its Quantum Gravity Gradiometer Pathfinder, bringing the total to $40 million, Infleqtion announced Thursday. The next phase will focus on hardware development and testing.

The Quantum Gravity Gradiometer Pathfinder is a highly sensitive quantum sensor and would be the first of its kind in space. It’s a project led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory along with Infleqtion to analyze slight shifts in Earth’s gravitational field and study what’s happening both on the surface of the planet and below it.

The sensor aims to look for underground sources of water and other changes to natural resources on the planet from low Earth orbit.

This phase of development is set to be done throughout 2027 and the mission is aiming to launch in 2030.

“The path from quantum science to a system that can fly in space takes years of engineering, testing, and collaboration,” said Matt Kinsella, CEO of Infleqtion, in a news release. “Every milestone brings quantum sensing closer to enabling entirely new ways to observe our planet from orbit.”

Infleqtion was founded in 2007 by the company’s current Chief Technology Officer Dana Anderson, a collaborator of Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman, Colorado’s Nobel Prize winners who proved Albert Einstein’s theory that atoms in extremely cold temperatures can behave as one particle.

Anderson worked with them to further the technology to study the Bose-Einstein condensate phenomenon and later commercialized it. The company went public earlier this year, opened a new headquarters in Louisville last week and is valued over $3 billion.

Infleqtion’s quantum tech “shoots laser beams at atoms to get them to do useful things,” Anderson said.

Now, that scientific discovery is finding commercial applications such as analyzing the movement of water around the planet.

In a demonstration at the headquarters opening, Infleqtion’s engineers explained how the sensor can get to extremely cold temperatures in space much easier than on Earth. The sensor can reach the Bose-Einstein condensate state and get extremely precise measurements with the help of microgravity.

The sensor also has applications on Earth.

Infleqtion recently announced it plans to use a Quantum Gravity Gradiometer Pathfinder in Colorado to look for critical minerals. It will be used to measure the density and geological structure underground in a method the company claims is faster, less invasive and not as risky as traditional methods of mining.

The company’s CEO spoke to Congress earlier this year, urging it to open regulations to allow quantum technology to help the U.S. search for critical minerals and lessen its dependence on other nations for them.

One of the first attempts from Infleqtion will be in Western Colorado’s Third Congressional District, the company said.