The European Space Agency has approved a mission that will hunt for gravitational waves – ripples in the fabric of space-time generated by cataclysmic cosmic events such as the merging and creation of black holes.
After spending decades in development, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna mission (Lisa) has been given the green light for 2034.
Lisa will be made up of three satellites which will follow Earth in its orbit around the Sun in a triangular formation, each 2.5 million kilometres from the next.
Using powerful lasers, Lisa will attempt to measure any possible distortion caused by a passing gravitational wave on the “minuscule scale of a few millionths of a millionth of a metre over a distance of a million kilometres”.
Gravitational waves were first predicted by Albert Einstein more than a century ago.
They were first observed in September 2015 during the merging of two black holes and the second detection occurred three months later.
The third detection, which the astronomers labelled GW170104, was made on January 4 2017.
In addition to ramping up its hunt for gravitation waves, the ESA has also moved ahead with a new exoplanet-finding observatory called PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (Plato).
Plato, which consists of 26 telescopes working together on a single platform, will search several hundreds of thousands of stars looking for rocky planets orbiting sun-like stars, including those that could be habitable.
Following its launch in 2026, Plato will stare at patches of sky for up to two years in order to capture more than one planetary transit.
