Previous abstract Next abstract  Session 64 - Telescopes for the
Next Millennium. Oral session, Thursday, January 08  [64.09]
OMEGA: A Space Gravitational Wave MIDEX Mission  B. Hiscock
(Montana State U.), R. W. Hellings (JPL)  OMEGA is a future
gravitational wave astronomy project to be proposed as a MIDEX
mission. It consists of six miniprobes in high circular Earth
orbit that track each other with lasers. Each miniprobe also has
a sensitive drag-free system that eliminates external non-
gravitational perturbations on the probe. The spacecraft are
placed two-by-two at the vertices of an equilateral triangle
with million-kilometer sides. By combining signals from the six
miniprobes, a Michelson interferometer can be created to measure
the tiny distance perturbations produced by gravitational waves
in the band from 10 secs to 10^4 secs. A number of interesting
sources may be found in this wavelength band. Interacting white
dwarf binaries such as AM CVn will definitely be detectable, so
the actual detection of