Europe’s Space Program Will Launch a Gravitational Wave Hunting Spacecraft in 2034 – Futurism

In Brief At a recent ESA Science Program Committee meeting the LISA mission was set for a 2034 launch. The trio of satellites will search for gravitational waves from collisions of supermassive black holes millions of times larger than those detected by LIGO. LISA Launch Set

The ESAs Science Program Committee met on June 20, and at the top of their agenda was addressing planning for theagencys missions to come over thenext 20 years one ofwhich will be athree satellite Laser Interferometer Space Antenna mission (LISA). The space antennawas designed to detect gravitational waves. The LISA mission has been selected to move forward and is set to launch in 2034.

The project uses the satellite trio to create a huge triangle in space. The satellites form the corners and lasers bouncing across the 2.5 million kilometers (1.55 million miles) between them form itssides. The triangle itself will follow Earth as it orbits the Sun. Meanwhile, the satellites will be sorting through an impressive array of cosmic noise to determine which signals are the most promising signs of supermassive black holes, and which are just false leads.

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) first detected gravitational waves in September 2015, confirming its initial findings when the waves weredetected again in June of 2016. By February of 2017, scientists learned that LIGO also produces the waves. Earlier this year, LIGOdetected the waves for the third time.They appearto be from a supermassive black hole thats 49 times larger than our sun.

LISA is taking the detection of gravitational waves to the next level by searching for supermassive black holes millions of times larger than those found by LIGO. LISA should also be able to give scientists enough lead time to observe the black holes with telescopes, enabling us to discover more about how these collisions work.

Well be able to see signals for months, so well have time to point all these other telescopes at that point in the sky to see if theres any other signals coming from that area when the merger happens, ESAs senior advisor for science & exploration Mark McCaughrean told New Scientist.

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Europe's Space Program Will Launch a Gravitational Wave Hunting Spacecraft in 2034 - Futurism