LISA Mission

About LISA Mission:

• The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (Lisa) mission is a collaborative effort between Nasa and the European Space Agency (ESA) set to launch in the mid-2030s.
• The main objective of the mission is to detect and study gravitational waves by putting three spacecrafts into the Earth’s orbit and positioning them in a triangular format with 1.6 million miles on each side.
• It will be the "first gravitational wave detector in space" and will "explore the fundamental nature of gravity and black holes". It will also probe the rate of expansion of the Universe.
  • All three spacecraft will have two telescopes each. The LISA mission will use lasers to detect gravitational waves.
  • The LISA mission will comprise three spacecraft. These three spacecraft will fly in a triangular formation behind the Earth as our planet orbits the Sun.
  • The spacecraft will sit in a heliocentric orbit, about 50 million km from Earth, with a distance of around 2.5 million km between each spacecraft.
  • LISA will detect ripples in spacetime through subtle changes in the distances between free-floating cubes nestled within each spacecraft.
  • Changes in the relative distances between these golden cubes will be tracked with extreme accuracy using laser interferometry.

Q1: What are Gravitational waves?

Gravitational waves are distortions in spacetime caused by energetic events involving dense objects with strong gravitational fields. They were first predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. They are weak and interact minimally with matter, allowing them to penetrate cosmic distances undistorted and leaving pristine signatures on source dynamics and local spacetime structure.

News: Nasa reveals first look at six telescopes tasked with detecting gravitational waves