November 27th, 2015 – On Wednesday, December 2, at 4 pm Kourou, in French Guiana, launches into space the Vega carrier that will accompany the Lisa Pathfinder space probe, a technological precursor for space observation on gravitational waves, developed by the European Space Agency. This is the third largest mission of the Cosmic Vision scientific program. An important contribution came from the Italians, both in scientific and technological terms: the inertial sensors were made by the Italian Space Agency with the industrial support of CGS (Compagnia Generale per lo Spazio) and the University of Trento and the National Institute of Nuclear Physics led by the Principal Investigator of the experiment, Stefano Vitale. The mission has the task of opening the way for the construction of a space observatory for gravitational waves that should be fully completed by 2034 with the launch of mission e-Lisa. (Red)
