LISA in 2012 and Beyond: 20 Years After the First Proposal

Abstract

After 20 years of study as a joint ESA-NASA mission, LISA had to be redesigned as an ESA-only mission in 2011/2012 to meet programmatic and budgetary constraints of the space agencies. The result is a mission concept called “eLISA” or “NGO” with two arms instead of three and one million km armlengths instead of 5, which results in smaller launch mass but still provides revolutionary science. Nevertheless, even the reduced science is expected to be revolutionary for the study of black holes and other astrophysical and cosmological questions. “eLISA”/“NGO” was not selected in ESA’s call for the first (“L1”) large mission in the Cosmic Vision program, but is a strong candidate for the L2 call, with possible international contributions from the US and/or China.