Three-Craft Gravity-Wave Mission Gets Green Light Success of LISA Pathfinder Test Satellite Paves Way for Full-Scale Experiment

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LISA Pathfinder — shown before being encapsulated into a rocket for launch — allowed scientists to test technology for detecting gravitational waves.

SPACE Three-craft gravity-wave mission gets green light Success of LISA Pathfinder test satellite paves way for full-scale experiment.

BY DAVIDE CASTELVECCHI the European Space Agency (ESA) to give the that some people believed it was.” go-ahead to a full-scale version able to sense Currently set to fly in 2034, the full-scale urope’s gravitational-wave hunters are cataclysmic events that can’t be felt on Earth. Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) celebrating. On 1 July, a satellite will The LISA Pathfinder mission, launched in will be the space analogue of the Laser Interfero wrap up its mission to test technology for late 2015, beat its precision target by a factor of meter Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), Ethe pioneering quest to measure gravitational 1,000 and quieted critics who have doubted its two machines in the United States — each with ripples in the stillness of space. Over the past potential, says project scientist Paul McNamara, a pair of 4-kilometre-long arms — that first year, the craft has performed much better than an astrophysicist at ESA in Noordwijk, the detected the ripples by ‘hearing’ the merger of many had hoped. That success has convinced Netherlands. “This is not the impossible task two black holes. LISA’s three probes will fly in

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a triangle, millions of kilometres apart, making the mission sensitive to much longer gravi- GRAVITY LABORATORY tational waves, such as the ripples produced by LISA Path nder showed that it could measure tiny variations in the distance between two free-falling cubes, paving the way for a full-scale experiment in which the falling masses will reside on dierent the collisions of even larger black holes. satellites, millions of kilometres apart. The mission will bounce laser beams between the three LISA craft — or, more At the heart of Path nder Any disturbance to are two free-falling metal 38 cm the relative motion precisely, between test masses suspended in cubes, shielded from all of the cubes aects MEDIALAB/ESA ATG PICTURE: a vacuum inside each satellite. Taking advan- forces except gravity by the frequency of the tage of the vibration-free conditions of space, their housing. laser bouncing it will measure tiny variations in the distances between them. between the test masses that reveal the passage The housing monitors The cubes oat in of space-warping gravitational waves. each cube’s position and a vacuum, surrounded commands the craft to by instruments that LISA Pathfinder’s goal was to show that such move so that the cube is mitigate stray forces. variations could be measured in zero grav- always at its centre. ity and with a precision of one picometre, or one-billionth of a millimetre. High-precision thrusters adjusted Pathfinder’s route so that spacecraft out of its operating orbit and into its industrial partners will now be involved in it would closely follow the gravitational free final orbit around the Sun. On 1 July, Pathfinder detailed design and cost projections. Once fall of two test masses inside the craft and not will stop collecting data, and the spacecraft will those are finished, ESA will decide whether to interfere with their orbit. At the same time, the be put to sleep for good on 18 July. ‘adopt’ the mission and commit the funding probe bounced a laser beam between the two Pathfinder was “a triumph”, says William to build it. The United States — which was an masses — a pair of 2-kilogram cubes made of Klipstein, a physicist at NASA’s Jet Propul- equal partner in the mission until 2011, when a gold and platinum alloy — and measured sion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, it reduced its participation to save costs — is fluctuations in their separation (see ‘Gravity who works on LISA development but was not expected to provide important components. Laboratory’). involved in ESA’s Pathfinder mission. Its per- ESA has chosen two other large missions to The €400-million (US$447-million) probe formance “removes the last major technical go ahead before LISA — one to the moons of was declared a success in February 2016, two barrier for proceeding with a long-planned Jupiter, slated to launch in 2022, and an X-ray weeks after LIGO announced its first detec- ESA-led gravitational-wave mission”, he says. observatory for 2028. This puts LISA on sched- tion. Pathfinder did not detect gravitational In a unanimous decision on 20 June, ESA’s ule to be launched in 2034. But Pathfinder prin- waves — which would not have appreci- Science Programme Committee officially cipal investigator Stefano Vitale, a physicist at able effects over the short distance inside the selected LISA as the third of the agency’s the University of Trento in Italy, and others probe — but it showed that it could detect large, or €1-billion-class, mission in its cur- hope that its schedule can be accelerated. ESA’s motions 100 times smaller than the picometre rent science programme. The approval was call for proposals to lead the gravitational-wave requirement. Since then, the experiment’s per- long-awaited but had been in little doubt after observatory — won by Vitale’s team — was formance has improved by another order of Pathfinder’s success and LIGO’s gravitational- put out in late 2016, instead of late 2019 as the magnitude (M. Armano et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. wave discoveries, says Karsten Danzmann, a agency had planned. Vitale and other gravita- 118, 171101; 2017). director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravi- tional-wave researchers hope the agency will By early June this year, LISA Pathfinder tational Physics in Hanover, Germany, and push the launch date forward so that LISA can had almost run out of thruster fuel, and mis- Pathfinder’s co-principal investigator. start sending back data before too many of the sion control used what was left to nudge the The decision is not final, but it means that current key researchers have retired. ■

IMMIGRATION offer from a US company or organization. But that wording leaves room for inter- pretation, says Brendan Delaney, an immigration lawyer at Leavy, Frank & Delaney Court revives in Bethesda, Maryland. “If I were a research scientist affected by this, I would be reticent right now” about making job or travel decisions, he says. US travel ban All US visas are granted at the discretion of immigration officials, who will now have to determine whether applicants from the six Policy targets people from six majority-Muslim countries. travel-ban countries have a “bona fide” relationship to the United States. Delaney notes BY SARA REARDON and scientists from these countries who hope that a person with a valid US visa is not guar- to study or work in the United States. It bars anteed entry to the country. “We’re back into he US Supreme Court has reinstated citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria a wait-and-see pattern” until US immigration a limited version of President Donald and Yemen from travelling to the United States officials explain how they will interpret the Trump’s temporary order banning unless they have a “bona fide” connection with Supreme Court decision, Delaney says. Ttravellers from six majority-Muslim countries a person or entity in the country. But regardless of the eventual outcome from entering the United States. The court will Such a relationship should be formal and of the ongoing legal case, many researchers hear a legal challenge to the ban in October. documented, the court said. Examples include worry that uncertainty over US immigration The court’s decision, announced on a person with an offer of admission from a US policy, and perceptions that the country is 26 June, casts doubt on the fate of students university or someone who has accepted a job unwelcoming, may have already driven away

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