LISA, a $1.6 billion gravitational wave observatory, will launch in the next decade and significantly advance our understanding of the universe. This space-based interferometer will use lasers to measure distances between three spacecraft, detecting low-frequency gravitational waves that are too faint for Earth-based detectors. LISA's data will provide insights into the sources of gravitational waves, the evolution of black holes, and the structure of the cosmos.
LISA, a $1.6 billion gravitational wave observatory set to launch next decade, will revolutionize the way we see gravitational waves—the infinitesimal perturbations of spacetime first predicted over a century ago and only detected eight years ago.and the engineering hurdles that must be overcome to get the futuristic craft into space.
“You need to maneuver the craft as the masses are falling, to make sure the spacecraft itself doesn’t drift into the masses and whack them, which would be terrible,” Ford added. NASA is providing several elements of LISA’s instrumentation, including its laser system, telescope systems, and the devices that will manage levels of electric charge on the test cubes.The frequency of orbiting objects is determined by how often they complete a full orbit around each other. Our gravitational wave detectors are good at detecting certain frequencies for a variety of reasons, but every existing detector has one major limitation: They’re stuck on Earth.
The black holes seen by pulsar timing arrays are typically billions of times the mass of the Sun and reside at the center of monster galaxies—they even dwarf Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, which clocks in at roughly four million solar masses. If black holes were porridge, LISA would be Goldilocks. The mission will sniff out low frequency gravitational waves that are nigh impossible to differentiate from noise in Earth-based detectors.
GRAVITATIONAL WAVES SPACE TELESCOPE BLACK HOLES ASTROPHYSICS COSMOLOGY
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