» Report a Sighting
However, on April 8th 2011, NASA announced that it would likely be unable to continue its LISA partnership with the European Space Agency, due to funding limitations. ESA is planning to begin a full revision of the mission's concept, renamed the New Gravitational wave Observatory (or Next Gravitational wave Observatory) (NGO), with selection of the winning Cosmic Vision L-class mission candidate due in February 2012.If launched, LISA will be the first dedicated space-based gravitational-wave detector; it will measure gravitational waves by using laser interferometry to monitor the fluctuations in the relative distances between three spacecraft, arranged in an equilateral triangle with 5-million-kilometer arms, and flying along an Earth-like heliocentric orbit. Passing gravitational waves create oscillations in the inter-spacecraft distances, as measured by light, in directions transverse to the direction of wave propagation. LISA will be sensitive to waves in the frequency band between 0.03 milliHertz to 100 milliHertz, including signals from massive black holes that merge at the center of galaxies, or that consume smaller compact objects; from binaries of compact stars in our Galaxy; and possibly from other sources of cosmological origin, such as the very early phase of the Big Bang, and speculative astrophysical objects like cosmic strings and domain boundaries.
