ESA L1 mission selection

May 03, 2012
The top-level committee SPC of the European Space Agency today has decided that ESA's next (L1) large mission will be Juice, a mission to Jupiter, and not LISA in its latest low-cost European-only incarnation NGO/eLISA.

Prof. Dr. Karsten Danzmann, Chair of the LISA International Science Team, and Director at the AEI: "ESA's decision for the next large science mission does not come unexpectedly after all the discussions of the last few weeks. But we are not dispirited because the scientific review committee has voted us the unanimous number one in Scientific Value! We will now work on a strong technology program to reduce the remaining possible risks. And with the LISA Pathfinder mission in 2014 we will show in space that NGO's key technologies perform as expected and with reliability. A selection of the next large mission L2 in 2015 can then not bypass LISA! We congratulate JUICE on the selection."

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