LISA reaches a crucial milestone

The future gravitational-wave observatory in space completes a rigorous review

© NASA/JPL-Caltech/NASAEA/ESA/CXC/STScl/GSFCSVS/S.Barke (CC BY 4.0)

LISA Pathfinder - A Space Saga

Relive the groundbreaking technology demonstrator's mission milestones 5 years ago in a new Youtube mini-series released by the LISA Consortium.

LISA Pathfinder being encapsulated within the Vega rocket. © ESA–Manuel Pedoussaut

13th LISA Symposium talks are online

Find out about the exciting future of gravitational wave astrophysics in space!

Artist's impression of a LISA spacecraft. © AEI/MM/exozet

ESA ministers commit to biggest ever budget

The significant boost in funding for ESA’s world-class and inspirational science programme will allow the first gravitational wave detector in space, LISA, to fly alongside the black hole mission Athena.

ESA’s Council at Ministerial Level, Space19+, has concluded in Seville, Spain, with the endorsement of the most ambitious plan to date for the future of ESA and the whole European space sector. Image: ESA

Why we need a gravitational wave observatory in space

The science case for LISA

Merging Black Holes. Credit: T. Pyle/LIGO

The Gravitational Universe

Illuminating the dark universe with a new astronomy

Artist's impression of supermassive black hole. Credit: ESA/NASA, AVO project, Paolo Padovani.

LISA: A New Astronomy

Laser Interferometer Space Antenna

Artist's impression of LISA satellite. Credit: AEI/MM/exozet
The LISA Mission Homepage

LISA - observing gravitational waves in space

LISA will be a large-scale space mission designed to detect one of the most elusive phenomena in astronomy - gravitational waves. With LISA we will be able to observe the entire universe directly with gravitational waves, learning about the formation of structure and galaxies, stellar evolution, the early universe, and the structure and nature of spacetime itself.

The LISA Pathfinder Mission successfully paved the way for the LISA mission by demonstrating the key technologies for a large gravitational wave observatory in space. The results show that LISA Pathfinder is working to a precision better than required for LISA. The LISA Pathfinder mission was launched on 3rd December 2015 and ended in July 2017. 

The LISA Consortium

The LISA Consortium is committed to supporting the LISA mission. It includes all the main investigators involved in the highly successful LISA Pathfinder mission, a number of scientists who worked on the ground-based LIGO, Virgo, and GEO projects, and a number who worked on the Laser Ranging Interferometer on the GRACE Follow-On mission, thus making full use of the expertise accumulated so far. The LISA Consortium proposed and submitted the white paper The Gravitational Universe which was accepted for the ESA L3 slot.

If you are a scientist and wish to contribute to the LISA mission, use this scientist registration form.

A new frontier for exploring the physical universe

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Latest news and consortium activities

Date Title Summary
May 23, 2013
 ESA’s next large mission: LISA white paper submitted We have come remarkably far using light of different spectrums as our tool for observing...
May 20, 2013
 LPF scheduled for launch in 2015 The LISA consortium strongly supports ESA's LISA Pathfinder (LPF) mission, whose launch...
Apr 07, 2013
 Ready for launch: Heart of LISA Pathfinder space mission tested successfully The optical bench of the LISA Pathfinder (LPF) mission is currently being extensively...
Jun 25, 2013
 Latest LISA Pathfinder hardware delivery is 'Jewel in the Crown' A team of scientists from the University of Glasgow has successfully delivered a...
Aug 29, 2013
 LISA Pathfinder: from CAD models to ready-to-fly hardware Optical bench integrated into the core assembly LISA Pathfinder space mission reached...

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Conferences, publications and positions

Date News topicsort descending Image Title
Mar 11, 2024
 Conferences Black Holes & Cosmology, March 11-15 2024 at University of Bahamas
Nov 27, 2023
 Conferences 32nd Workshop on General Relativity and Gravitation, November 27 - December 1, 2023 in Japan
May 20, 2024
 Conferences First Stars VII, May 20-23, 2024, New York
Nov 27, 2023
 Conferences 12th Australasian Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation (ACGRG), November 27 - December 1, 2023, Hobart
Dec 02, 2023
 Conferences Intermediate-Mass Black Holes: The dawn of a revolutionary era, December 2-5 2023, San Pedro, Belize
May 26, 2024
 Conferences 16th Pisa Meeting on Advanced Detectors, May 26 -June 1, 2024, La Biodola, Italy
Oct 19, 2023
 Positions Faculty Positions Physics and Astronomy at UBC Vancouver
Nov 21, 2023
 Positions Postdoctoral position at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Positions PhD or Masters by Research positions – University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
Sep 26, 2023
 Positions Postdoctoral Fellowships in Gravitational Wave Physics and Multi-Messenger Astronomy at the Niels Bohr Institute
Oct 26, 2023
 Positions Postdoc positions at CPT Marseille
Feb 01, 2023
 Positions Embedded Flight Software Engineer (m/f/d) “Scientific Instrumentation for Space Applications”
Nov 07, 2023
 Positions Postdoc position at UTRGV in Brownsville
Oct 19, 2023
 Positions Tenure-track faculty position in astrophysics at University of Rochester
Nov 21, 2023
 Positions Project Manager (m/f/d) for Space Department at AEI Hannover

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