Thales Alenia Space signs contract with OHB to provide critical elements for LISA mission

LISA mission. Photo courtesy OHB

Thales Alenia Space has signed a €263 million contract with prime contractor OHB System AG for the development of key elements for ESA's Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission. LISA will be the first space-based observatory dedicated to studying gravitational waves.

LISA: a future constellation of three satellites spaced 2.5 million kilometers apart.

LISA will detect gravitational waves, ripples in space-time predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity generated by massive accelerating objects, with a sensitivity and in a frequency range that cannot be measured from the ground.

This groundbreaking mission will enable scientists to study gravitational waves generated by many different types of events, from interacting compact stars to merging supermassive black holes at the cores of galaxies, and to expand our cosmic horizon back to the epochs preceding the formation of stars and galaxies.