Rightsizing LISA

TL;DR

This paper reviews efforts to simplify and reduce the costs of the LISA mission architecture while maintaining scientific goals, through analysis of potential subsystems downsizing and mission descopes.

Contribution

It reports on recent efforts to identify simplifications and cost reductions in the LISA architecture without significant science loss.

Findings

Some simplifications in the baseline architecture have been identified.

Cost savings from descopes are modest.

Science impact of proposed reductions is minimal.

Abstract

The LISA science requirements and conceptual design have been fairly stable for over a decade. In the interest of reducing costs, the LISA Project at NASA has looked for simplifications of the architecture, at downsizing of subsystems, and at descopes of the entire mission. This is a natural activity of the formulation phase, and one that is particularly timely in the current NASA budgetary context. There is, and will continue to be, enormous pressure for cost reduction from both ESA and NASA, reviewers and the broader research community. Here, the rationale for the baseline architecture is reviewed, and recent efforts to find simplifications and other reductions that might lead to savings are reported. A few possible simplifications have been found in the LISA baseline architecture. In the interest of exploring cost sensitivity, one moderate and one aggressive descope have been evaluated; the cost savings are modest and the loss of science is not.