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
Jul 08, 2019
 Discovering exoplanets with gravitational waves In a recent paper in Nature Astronomy, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for...
May 23, 2019
 ESA: A unique experiment to explore black holes What happens when two supermassive black holes collide? Combining the observing power of...
Apr 18, 2019
 Public talk / live stream: The Gravitational Wave Astronomical Revolution - Dr. David Reitze As part of the 4th LISA Consortium Meeting, Dr. David Reitze will give a public talk on...
Feb 28, 2019
 A high-precision test bench for LISA technology AEI researchers develop novel precise laboratory setup to verify technology for LISA, the...
Sep 14, 2018
 Another milestone for LISA: Further investigations confirm LISA Pathfinder's success Latest investigations confirmed that LISA Pathfinder has demonstrated the feasibility of...

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Conferences, publications and positions

Date News topic Image Title
Nov 08, 2023
 Positions Project Manager (m/f/d) for the Interferometric Detection System (IDS) of LISA at AEI Hannover
Nov 07, 2023
 Positions Postdoc position at UTRGV in Brownsville
Nov 07, 2023
 Positions Faculty position at University of South Carolina
Nov 07, 2023
 Positions Postdoctoral positions at Penn State
Nov 07, 2023
 Positions Assistant Professor in Time-Domain Astronomy at University of Florida
Nov 02, 2023
 Positions Faculty Positions in astronomy and gw-astronomy at Texas Tech Lubbock
Nov 02, 2023
 Positions Postdoc position at IGFAE, Santiago de Compostela
Nov 02, 2023
 Positions Associate or Full Professor in Technology Development or Instrumentation at University of Florida
Nov 02, 2023
 Positions Joint PhD Position in Neutron Star/Gravitational Wave Physics, Coimbra/Potsdam, Portugal/Germany
Nov 02, 2023
 Positions Research Associate in Theoretical Cosmology at University of Sheffield
Nov 02, 2023
 Positions Postdoctoral and scientific software developer positions in gravitational wave physics, Palma, Spain
Nov 01, 2023
 Positions Postdoctoral Positions at the RIT’s Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation
Nov 01, 2023
 Positions Faculty position at the University of Michigan
Oct 26, 2023
 Positions Postdoctoral positions and PhD position in gravitational wave physics at GRAPPA, the University of Amsterdam
Oct 26, 2023
 Positions Postdoc positions at CPT Marseille

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