{"id":9419,"date":"2024-10-22T15:08:18","date_gmt":"2024-10-22T19:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/?p=9419"},"modified":"2024-10-22T15:08:18","modified_gmt":"2024-10-22T19:08:18","slug":"nasa-reveals-prototype-telescope-for-gravitational-wave-observatory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/?p=9419","title":{"rendered":"NASA Reveals Prototype Telescope for Gravitational Wave Observatory"},"content":{"rendered":"
On May 20, the full-scale Engineering Development Unit Telescope for the LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) mission, still in its shipping frame, was moved within a clean room at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. NASA\/Dennis Henry<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASA has revealed the first look at a full-scale prototype for six telescopes that will enable, in the next decade, the space-based detection of gravitational waves \u2014 ripples in space-time caused by merging black holes and other cosmic sources.<\/p>\n

The LISA<\/a> (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) mission is led by ESA (European Space Agency) in partnership with NASA to detect gravitational waves by using lasers to measure precise distances \u2014 down to picometers, or trillionths of a meter \u2014 between a trio of spacecraft distributed in a vast configuration larger than the Sun. Each side of the triangular array will measure nearly 1.6 million miles, or 2.5 million kilometers.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwin telescopes aboard each spacecraft will both transmit and receive infrared laser beams to track their companions, and NASA is supplying all six of them to the LISA mission,\u201d said Ryan DeRosa, a researcher at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. \u201cThe prototype, called the Engineering Development Unit Telescope, will guide us as we work toward building the flight hardware.\u201d<\/p>\n

The prototype LISA telescope undergoes post-delivery inspection in a darkened NASA Goddard clean room on May 20. The entire telescope is made from an amber-colored glass-ceramic that resists changes in shape over a wide temperature range, and the mirror\u2019s surface is coated in gold. NASA\/Dennis Henry<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Engineering Development Unit Telescope, which was manufactured and assembled by L3Harris Technologies<\/a> in Rochester, New York, arrived at Goddard in May. The primary mirror is coated in gold to better reflect the infrared lasers and to reduce heat loss from a surface exposed to cold space since the telescope will operate best when close to room temperature.<\/p>\n

The prototype is made entirely from an amber-colored glass-ceramic called Zerodur<\/a>, manufactured by Schott<\/a> in Mainz, Germany. The material is widely used for telescope mirrors and other applications requiring high precision because its shape changes very little over a wide range of temperatures.<\/p>\n

The LISA mission is slated to launch in the mid-2030s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASA has revealed the first look at a full-scale prototype for six telescopes that will enable, in the next decade, the space-based detection of gravitational waves \u2014 ripples in space-time caused by merging black holes and other cosmic sources. The LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) mission is led by ESA (European Space Agency) in partnership with NASA…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":9421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/gsfc-20240520-lisa-000536.jpg?w=2048&format=webp","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9419"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9422,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9419\/revisions\/9422"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}