LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) line drawing

The primary scientific goal of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission is to detect and observe gravitational waves from massive black holes and galactic binaries with periods in the range of a few seconds to a few hours (i.e. in the frequency range 10-4 to 10-1 Hz). This low-frequency range is inaccessible to ground-based interferometers because of the unshieldable background of local gravitational noise arising from atmospheric effects and seismic activity. Ground-based interferometers are also physically limited in length to a few kilometres, restricting their coverage to events such as supernova core collapses and binary neutron star mergers.