NASA’s New Einstein Probes Office

Albert Einstein made enough predictions about the nature of gravity and relativity that NASA has dedicated a whole office and fleet of spacecraft to him. This week the space agency announced their new Einstein Probes Office, where they’ll be compiling evidence for the strangest stuff in the Universe: dark energy, black holes, and the cosmic microwave background radiation.

The Beyond Einstein program consists of 5 proposed spacecraft; two major spacecraft, and 3 smaller probes. The two major missions are already in the works, and include the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), which will orbit the Sun and measure gravitational waves. Constellation-X will watch matter falling into supermassive black holes.

The smaller probes include missions to investigate the nature of dark energy, the physics of the Big Bang, and the distribution and types of black holes in the universe. NASA has already approved preliminary studies into some of these missions.

NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy have put together a committee to figure out which missions should be launched first, and will release their findings in September, 2007.

Original Source:NASA Goddard