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Experimental results from the ST7 mission on LISA Pathfinder

Mendes, L.; Anderson, J.; Cooper, M. +146 more

The Space Technology 7 Disturbance Reduction System (ST7-DRS) is a NASA technology demonstration payload that operated from January 2016 through July 2017 on the European Space Agency's (ESA) LISA Pathfinder spacecraft. The joint goal of the NASA and ESA missions was to validate key technologies for a future space-based gravitational wave observat…

Precision charge control for isolated free-falling test masses: LISA pathfinder results

Mendes, L.; Russano, G.; Lloro, I. +83 more

The LISA Pathfinder charge management device was responsible for neutralizing the cosmic-ray-induced electric charge that inevitably accumulated on the free-falling test masses at the heart of the experiment. We present measurements made on ground and in flight that quantify the performance of this contactless discharge system which was based on p…

Calibrating the system dynamics of LISA Pathfinder

Mendes, L.; Russano, G.; Lloro, I. +75 more

LISA Pathfinder (LPF) was a European Space Agency mission with the aim to test key technologies for future space-borne gravitational-wave observatories like LISA. The main scientific goal of LPF was to demonstrate measurements of differential acceleration between free-falling test masses at the sub-femto-g level, and to understand the residual acc…