Photo: NASA/Dennis Henry
There are many mysteries in the Universe that surrounds us, so it's pretty impossible to create a list of the most important ones. To me, however, it seems like those things called gravitational waves should be at the top of any list.
Gravitational waves are generally described as ripples in spacetime generated by violent processes that constantly take place in the Universe. Like, say, black holes accelerating to the point they literally shake the fabric of spacetime, sending ripples throughout space to let everyone know of their presence and activity.
Knowing about such disturbances (where they are, how intense, and so on) could be important for our understanding of how the Universe began, as they could allow us a peak all the way back to a few seconds after the Big Bang. And it could also shed a bit more light on how massive black holes are born.
We've known more about gravitational waves since the time of Albert Einstein, but to date only timid attempts at studying them have been made, generally using ground-based equipment. Yet, given how these things are minuscule when compared to the Universe around them, they are very hard to detect from here.
That's why the European Space Agency (ESA) and its American counterpart, NASA, imagined a space-based gravitational wave detector. It was presented at the beginning of the year as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), and this week we got word of the prototype hardware being ready.
LISA is not a single spacecraft, but a collection of three of them, which will be placed in orbit behind our planet to follow it as it spins around the Sun. Each of the spacecraft will be equipped with a pair of telescopes, the actual gravitational waves detector (solid gold-platinum cubes floating freely inside special housings), and laser communications equipment.
Placed in such a way as to form a triangle with each of its three sides measuring 2.5 million km (1.55 million miles), they will be used to detect "tiny changes in the distances between the masses in the different spacecraft," and that could mean the presence of gravitational waves.
The prototype presented by NASA this week is that of the telescopes that will go into the LISA spacecraft. It's called Engineering Development Unit Telescope and it was put together by L3Harris with the goal of informing engineers on the build of the real things.
The telescope, made entirely from an amber-colored glass-ceramic (something NASA likes to call Zerodur) comes with a primary mirror coated in gold and it should be capable of detecting ripples in spacetime down to trillionths of a meter. It will also be used to transmit and receive infrared laser beams from the other spacecraft of the LISA array.
The two space agencies plan to launch the LISA mission in the mid-2030s, so a lot of work on the mission lies ahead.
Knowing about such disturbances (where they are, how intense, and so on) could be important for our understanding of how the Universe began, as they could allow us a peak all the way back to a few seconds after the Big Bang. And it could also shed a bit more light on how massive black holes are born.
We've known more about gravitational waves since the time of Albert Einstein, but to date only timid attempts at studying them have been made, generally using ground-based equipment. Yet, given how these things are minuscule when compared to the Universe around them, they are very hard to detect from here.
That's why the European Space Agency (ESA) and its American counterpart, NASA, imagined a space-based gravitational wave detector. It was presented at the beginning of the year as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), and this week we got word of the prototype hardware being ready.
LISA is not a single spacecraft, but a collection of three of them, which will be placed in orbit behind our planet to follow it as it spins around the Sun. Each of the spacecraft will be equipped with a pair of telescopes, the actual gravitational waves detector (solid gold-platinum cubes floating freely inside special housings), and laser communications equipment.
Placed in such a way as to form a triangle with each of its three sides measuring 2.5 million km (1.55 million miles), they will be used to detect "tiny changes in the distances between the masses in the different spacecraft," and that could mean the presence of gravitational waves.
The prototype presented by NASA this week is that of the telescopes that will go into the LISA spacecraft. It's called Engineering Development Unit Telescope and it was put together by L3Harris with the goal of informing engineers on the build of the real things.
The telescope, made entirely from an amber-colored glass-ceramic (something NASA likes to call Zerodur) comes with a primary mirror coated in gold and it should be capable of detecting ripples in spacetime down to trillionths of a meter. It will also be used to transmit and receive infrared laser beams from the other spacecraft of the LISA array.
The two space agencies plan to launch the LISA mission in the mid-2030s, so a lot of work on the mission lies ahead.
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