NASA has selected Ball Aerospace and Technology Corp. of Boulder, Colorado, to provide the Laser Prestabilizaton System (LPS) for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) laser assembly.

The total value of the cost-plus-fixed-fee contract is $11,906,675, and the period of performance is from Sept. 1, 2022, through April 1, 2025. The work will be performed at the contractor's facility in Boulder.

The LISA mission is a collaboration of ESA (the European Space Agency), NASA, and an international consortium of scientists. The LISA mission is planned to launch in the 2035 timeframe. The LISA Telescope and laser systems are being developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

NASA is in the technology development and study phase of the mission and will be contributing hardware as part of an agreement with ESA. LISA consists of three spacecraft arranged in a triangle and separated by millions of miles, trailing tens of millions of miles, more than one hundred times the distance to the Moon, behind Earth as it orbits the Sun.

These three spacecraft will relay continuous laser beams back and forth to detect gravitational wave signatures that come from distortions of spacetime. This contract pertains to the LPS used for frequency stabilizing the laser.

Related Links
LISA at NASA
Space Technology News - Applications and Research

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