eLISA/NGO – A New Astronomy
ESA selects Europe's next large science mission
"ESA´s decision to select JUICE as the next large science mission does not come unexpectedly after all the discussions of the last few weeks. But we are not dispirited because the scientific review committee has voted us the unanimous number one in Scientific Value!
We now will work on a strong technology program to reduce the remaining possible risks. And with the LISA Pathfinder mission in 2014 we will show in space that NGO´s key technologies perform as expected and with reliability. A selection of of the next large mission L2 in 2015 can then not bypass LISA! We congratulate JUICE on the selection."
Prof. Dr. Karsten Danzmann, Chair of the LISA International Science Team
eLISA/NGO (evolved Laser Interferometer Space Antenna / New Gravitational Wave Observatory) will add a new sense to our perception of the Universe - for the first time we will observe e.g. Black holes and Neutron stars directly and gain unique information about the behaviour, structure and early history of the Universe.
eLISA/NGO will open the gravitational wave window in space and measure gravitational radiation over a broad band of frequencies, from about 0.1 mHz to 100 mHz, a band where the Universe is richly populated by strong sources of gravitational waves.
eLISA/NGO consists of one mother- and two daughter spacecraft separated by a distance of 1 Mio km, forming the first Michelson interferometer in space.
The entire mission will be a European-only mission and stay within resources available in Europe.
Link to the Yellow Book
ftp://ftp.rssd.esa.int/pub/ojennric/NGO_YB/NGO_YB.pdf
Link to article by Pau Amaro-Seoane et al., eLISA: Astrophysics and cosmology in the millihertz regime
