LISA: Seeing the Low Frequency Gravitational Wave Cosmos

Late in the 2010’s, NASA and ESA will launch the first gravitational wave observatory in space: the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). LISA is a constellation of spacecraft that operate in concert as a 5-million kilometer arm length interferometer. It will be sensitive to low-frequency radiation in the millihertz regime of the gravitational wave spectrum, observing massive black hole binaries, interacting binaries in the galaxy, the capture of stellar mass objects by supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei, and possibly stochastic backgrounds of gravitational radiation of cosmological origin. This paper reviews the LISA configuration and operations, and some of the science that LISA’s observations of the Cosmos will reveal