Abstract
LISA Pathfinder, the European Space Agency’s technology demonstrator mission for future spaceborne gravitational wave observatories, was launched on 3 December 2015, from the European space port of Kourou, French Guiana. After a short duration transfer to the final science orbit, the mission has been gathering science data since. This data has allowed the science community to validate the critical technologies and measurement principle for low frequency gravitational wave detection and thereby confirming the readiness to start the next generation gravitational wave observatories, such as LISA.This paper will briefly describe the mission, followed by a description of the science operations highlighting the performance achieved.Details of the various experiments performed during the nominal science operations phase can be found in accompanying papers in this volume.
Highlights
LISA Pathfinder (LPF), the European Space Agency’s second SMART 1 mission, was instigated to demonstrate technologies for future spaceborne gravitational wave observatories, for example, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission, recently proposed to ESA [1].LISA has continually been ranked as one of the most scientifically important missions under study [2]
First Results As mentioned previously, the primary science measurement of LISA Pathfinder is the measure of differential acceleration between the test masses
The corresponding differential acceleration requirement was relaxed with respect to LISA, the relaxation comes from the spacecraft environment and the nature of the LISA Pathfinder mission
Summary
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