Lisa Pathfinder mission overview
LISA Pathfinder will pave the way for future missions by testing in flight the very concept of gravitational wave detection: it will put two test masses in a near-perfect gravitational free-fall and control and measure their motion with unprecedented accuracy. LISA Pathfinder will use the latest technology to minimise the extra forces on the test masses, and to take measurements.
The inertial sensors, the laser metrology system, the drag-free control system and an ultra-precise micro-propulsion system make this a highly unusual mission.
LISA Pathfinder is an ESA mission, which will also carry a NASA payload.
Big step for a new science
how do you keep 3 satellites separated by 5 million kilometers still from eachother? they'd be on very different orbits around the sun
1:23 looks like something from warhammer 40k!
How do satellites obtain or compute their precise position in orbit?
Why not Dora the Explorer?
It is going to be great when governments get out of the way of space science. Then and only then will we be able to do what we should have been doing for the last (at least) 40 years. I find it disgusting that it is taking us so long to get to this point!
astounding
It's not the first anymore, LIGO members are the first.