A. Schleicher

TL;DR: The current status of the LISA Pathfinder mission is described, a precursor mission aimed at demonstrating key technologies for future space-based gravitational wave detectors, like LISA, and performance measurements and analysis of these flight components lead to an expected performance of theLISA Pathfinder which is a significant improvement over the mission requirements.

TL;DR: LISA Pathfinder as discussed by the authors is a dedicated technology demonstrator for the joint ESA/NASA Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission, which essentially mimics one arm of the LISA constellation by shrinking the 5 million kilometre armlength down to a few tens of centimetres, giving up the sensitivity to gravitational waves, but keeping the measurement technology.

TL;DR: In this article, a quantitative assessment of the performance of the upcoming LISA Pathfinder geodesic explorer mission is presented, based on the results of extensive ground testing and simulation campaigns using flight hardware, flight control and operations algorithms.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors present an overview of recent activities, focusing on the improvements in the modelling of the instrument and in the data analysis campaigns performed both with real and simulated data.