Space Ripple Technology

Europe has launched the Lisa Pathfinder satellite to test space 'ripple' technology.

16:05 03 December 2015

Lisa Pathfinder satellite was launched as a part of an exquisite space physics experiment. Its mission is to test the required technologies to detect gravitational waves or the warping of space-time produced by cataclysmic events in the cosmos.

 

The satellite was launched from the Kourou spaceport at 01:04 local time and went into orbit on a Vega rocket from French Guiana. It is expected that the mission will operate for about a year.

 

The satellite uses a single instrument to measure and maintain a 38cm separation between two small gold-platinum blocks.

 

"We use the laser interferometer to bounce light between the proof masses and the optical structure that we built in Glasgow," says Dr Harry Ward from Glasgow University, UK.

 

"We then read out the phase of the laser beams as we recombine them, and motion of the proof mass translates into phase changes in the light - essentially, the light gets brighter or dimmer."

 

"Gravitational waves propagate, we believe, at the speed of light, and they carry with them knowledge about the event that caused them," explained Prof Mike Cruise from Birmingham University.

 

"If that's two black holes crashing into one another, we would often times be able to tell the spin of the black holes, their mass and how far apart they are; and many other details of the collision."