Leuven models help unlock the dark part of space in the largest European Space Agency mission ever
The largest mission ever of the European Space Agency ESA should soon - with the help of Leuven models - unlock the dark part of space. 'This will be the beginning of a revolution in cosmology,' says Leuven professor Thomas Hertog.
Space agency ESA gives green light for construction of LISA telescope. LISA is a telescope to measure gravitational waves in space starting in the mid-2030s. The telescope is a technological tour de force, involving 1,500 scientists and a budget of 2 billion euros. A team from Leuven is building the models to interpret LISA's signals.
The largest mission ever of the European Space Agency ESA should soon - with the help of Leuven models - unlock the dark part of space. 'This will be the beginning of a revolution in cosmology,' says Leuven professor Thomas Hertog.
The European Space Agency ESA on Thursday gave the final green light for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). The space telescope is ambitious pioneering work. With a budget of some 2 billion euros and a team of 1,500 scientists, the installation should measure gravitational waves in space for the first time ever starting in the mid-2030s.
"The first ideas for such a telescope go back to the 1970s," says Leuven professor Thomas Hertog. He has led a Belgian team involved in the project since 2016.
Some preliminary research has already been done in recent years. Among other things, a demonstration model, the LISA Pathfinder, was successfully launched in 2015. But with the approval now, construction of the telescope is gaining momentum.
'The scale of the mission is colliding with the limits of what is possible,' Duke said. 'It will be the largest project ever in space.' The telescope will consist of three separate spacecraft that together form a triangle. That triangle will rotate around the sun together with the Earth. 'With the Belgian team, we will build a digital model that will allow us to give meaning to the signals picked up by the telescope.'
The distance between the three satellites will be 2.5 million kilometers each, or more than six times the distance between the Earth and the moon. Laser beams will be used to minutely measure the distance between the three sides of the triangle.
According to Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, that distance will change slightly as gravitational waves pass through the triangle. To give an idea of the precision required: over a distance of 2.5 million kilometers, we are talking about a difference of no more than the diameter of an atom.
The plans for LISA run parallel to the project to build an underground telescope for gravitational waves in Europe, the Einstein telescope. Belgium, along with the Netherlands and Germany, is a candidate to get that telescope into the ground here. Like LISA, it is a billion-dollar project.
'The two projects are not in each other's way,' says Hertog. 'On the contrary. They are complementary and will operate together.' From space, LISA can capture low-frequency gravitational waves, for example from two large black holes moving toward each other but still at a great distance.
Ultimately, the holy grail is to test the limits of Einstein's theory of relativity. 'For we know that his theory does not hold for black holes and for the big bang. But for the answers to those big questions, it will take some patience.'
Source: De Tijd, translated by Leuven MindGate
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