Ed. Print EUROPEAN SCIENTIFIC SATELLITE
LISA Pathfinder mission starts searching for gravitational waves. – Efe
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The European LISA Pathfinder scientific satellite blasted off yesterday, starting a pioneering mission that aims to capture directly for the first time gravitational waves and thus, in the long term, contribute to the study of supernovas and black holes.
With a day late because of a technical incident, the device took off aboard a rocket Vega town spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, at 4:04 GMT, as confirmed by the center operations of the European Space Agency (ESA), located in the German city of Darmstadt.
The satellite rocket undocked at 5:50 GMT, successfully and on schedule, completing the first phase a complex process of progressive separation on the way to its final position 1.5 million km from Earth.
“We have successfully received the first signal from LISA Pathfinder. We are extremely happy,” he said minutes after-flight director of the operations center of ESA, Andreas Rudolph.
The next 10 days will be key to continue gradually moving away from the Earth LISA Pathfinder and during this period the ESA has planned a series of critical maneuvers involve 50 scientists working in shifts day and night.
As of 11 December, will light six times the satellite propulsion modules, each time after making the elliptical orbit that trace the ship is much wider.
Once this phase, the ship will return a month later to light their propulsion modules to continue its path toward the Sun, reaching the end of January called Lagrange Point 1.
This place is ideal for experiments of LISA Pathfinder, because that is where the gravitational forces of the Earth and Sun are offset, canceling the interference.
Director of Science and Robotic Exploration ESA, Álvaro Giménez, said that then begin “the challenge for scientists” for this “very special ship” is “trying something that has never been proven.”
The heart of the mission are two identical cubic mass, 46 mm side and two kilos, made of an alloy of gold and platinum, floating inside a complex mechanism that keeps them isolated and controls all external conditions.
The aim is to measure with high precision (up to picometer, a trillionth of a meter) how these masses, arranged at a constant distance of 38 centimeters behave, and to detect any difference between them, because without outside influence should move in perfect sync.
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