Faculty members John Conklin and Peter Wass in the University of Florida’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering have been recognized with a NASA Group Achievement Award for their contributions to the **Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission Study Team.
The award, issued in July 2025, recognizes the team “for exceptional performance and success in achieving major milestones for the LISA mission, resulting in LISA’s progression to a flight project in 2024.”
The LISA Study Team played a critical role in guiding the mission through its early development stages, helping move the ambitious space observatory from concept planning to an official NASA flight project. Their work supported key technical studies and planning efforts needed to prepare the mission for implementation and helped the project reach a major milestone known as Key Decision Point-B, an important step in NASA’s mission development process.
The LISA mission will be a groundbreaking space-based observatory designed to detect gravitational waves—tiny ripples in space created by powerful cosmic events such as merging black holes. By observing these signals from space, scientists hope to gain new insights into how the universe evolves and how massive objects interact.
The MAE community congratulates Conklin and Wass on this recognition and their contributions to advancing one of NASA’s most exciting future space science missions.