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European Space Agency Greenlights Construction of LISA, the First Space-Based Gravitational Wave Detector

Led by a team including Northwestern University astrophysicist Shane Larson, LISA is set to launch in about 10 years and will provide unprecedented insights into gravitational waves and cosmic phenomena.

Artwork shows the laser arms of LISA as it detects ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves
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Triangular configuration of the Laser Interferometer
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Overview

  • Shane Larson, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University, will be part of the team to build the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a space-based gravitational-wave observatory.
  • LISA will consist of three spacecraft exactly 2.5 million kilometers apart, with laser beams connecting the three to form a giant equilateral triangle.
  • The European Space Agency (ESA) announced last week its formal adoption of LISA, with construction set to begin in 2025 and a planned launch around 2035.
  • LISA will allow scientists to observe a great number of things and their gravitational impacts, more than any other gravitational wave observatory.
  • LISA will be sensitive to gravitational waves with wavelengths between 300,000 kilometers and 3 billion kilometers, allowing it to detect phenomena such as black holes orbiting each other, the spiralling of colliding white-dwarf stars, and potentially even signals from the first black holes.