"Noise" From LISA Mission Enables Study Of Near-Earth Asteroids

Planetary scientists will get some unexpected help from the NASA/ESA LISA satellites thanks to a clever way of turning "noise" from that mission's data into useful information about near-Earth asteroids, according to a paper by Pasquale Tricarico, a scientist at the Tucson-based Planetary Science Institute. LISA is on a mission to detect gravitational waves - a warping of the space/time continuum that scientists hope to see directly for the first time. LISA, slated for launch no earlier than 2018, will include three satellites connected by laser beams. The distance between the satellites should change as a gravitational wave passes. But it's a small effect, causing the distance to change by less than an atom's width.