Sep. 2, 2015

ESA's ambitious mission - conducted with a significant Italian contribution - has concluded the trial phase and is ready to leave for Kourou. Launch is scheduled for the end of November

"Listening" to the sound of the universe - or at least finding out if it's possible. This is the ambitious goal of the LISA Pathfinder mission, ESA's first ever observatory, selected from the Cosmic Vision program and entirely dedicated to studying the gravitational waves foreseen by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity more than a century ago.
The mission, which included a significant Italian contribution, has just concluded the trial phase with excellent results at theIABG centre in Ottobrunn, Germany, and has now been officially announced to the press. The instrument's “core” - the inertial sensors built by Italian Space Agency funded CGS(Compagnia Generale per lo Spazio) and developed by researchers at the University of Trento and the INFN - was delivered last November with a ceremony in Milan.
The satellite is now ready to leave for the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, where it will be launched in the early hours of the morning on 27 November. It will be brought into orbit by VEGA, ESA's “big-little” Made in Italy rocket - bringing the total number of VEGA launches to six.

Project scientist Paul McNamara commented on behalf of ESA that “this is an extremely challenging mission that will pave the way for future space-based projects to observe gravitational waves, opening a new window to explore the cosmos".
LISA's goal is to prove the concept of gravitational wave detection from space, showing that it is possible to control and take high precision measurements of the movement of two masses in freefall.
“Detecting gravitational waves will allow us to study extreme phenomena and objects that are difficult to observe, such as black holes”, explained Stefano Vitale, from the University of Trento and the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) and PI of the LISA Technology Package (LTP), adding that “it will also make it possible to map the stratigraphy of the universe and reconstruct the origin of the galaxies and black holes that we can observe today”.