Pasadena Ties Extend to New Gravitational-Wave Observatory in India

Indian officials and LIGO-India scientists, including Brian O’Reilly of Caltech, celebrate the observatory’s groundbreaking (Photo – Brian O’Reilly)

A major new chapter in space science is unfolding thousands of miles from Southern California, but it has deep roots in Pasadena.

By News Desk

On April 23, 2026, construction officially began on LIGO-India, a new gravitational-wave observatory in Maharashtra. The facility will join a global network of detectors that includes the U.S.-based LIGO, as well as Virgo in Italy and KAGRA in Japan.

The Pasadena connection comes through California Institute of Technology, which co-manages LIGO alongside Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Caltech scientists have played a central role in the development of gravitational-wave detection technology and are now helping guide the next phase of its global expansion.

“This has been 20 years in the making, and we are finally making it happen,” said Rana Adhikari, a Caltech physics professor and longtime member of the LIGO collaboration.

Funded by the Indian government, LIGO-India will be built on a 174-acre site chosen for its low seismic activity, reducing interference with the ultra-sensitive instruments used to detect ripples in space-time. The observatory will mirror the design of existing U.S. detectors in Washington and Louisiana, featuring a laser interferometer with two 4-kilometer-long arms. Caltech and the LIGO Laboratory are contributing key components, technical expertise, and training.

LIGO first made history in 2015 with the direct detection of gravitational waves, confirming a prediction of Einstein’s theory of relativity and earning its founders the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics. Since then, the global network has recorded more than 200 detections from cosmic events such as black hole and neutron star mergers.

With the addition of LIGO-India, scientists expect major advances. A wider global network allows researchers to triangulate the origins of gravitational waves more precisely and study properties such as polarization—offering new insights into extreme cosmic events.

Pasadena-based researchers are already looking ahead to those possibilities. Mansi Kasliwal, a Caltech astronomy professor, highlighted the observatory’s impact on multi-messenger astronomy, which combines gravitational-wave data with traditional telescope observations.

“Neutron star mergers will get triangulated to a much smaller area than is possible today,” Kasliwal said, improving the chances of observing these events across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Beyond science, the project is also building international collaboration. Indian institutions will lead construction and operations, while partnerships with Caltech—including student research programs—are helping train the next generation of scientists.

The observatory is expected to begin operations by 2030, marking a significant milestone for both global astrophysics and Pasadena’s continuing role at the forefront of space research.

Read the full story at caltech.edu.