LISA Pathfinder space mission reached another important milestone: Its heart, the optical bench, was now further integrated into the core assembly of the satellite.
Dr Christian Killow (Scottish Universities Physics Alliance Advanced Fellow) said, “It is rewarding to see CAD models turning into real hardware!”
The optical bench was built and tested at the Institute for Gravitational Research (IGR) in Glasgow. Since its delivery from IGR to Astrium Germany it was tested again and then integrated into the LISA Technology Package – the satellite´s core that will prove key technologies for the LISA mission.
“Getting LISA Pathfinder’s core measurement technologies ready to go operational means that we have just completed another crucial step. We are now firmly on course for a launch in 2015”, says Prof. Karsten Danzmann, director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics and head of the Institute for Gravitational Physics at the Leibniz Universität Hannover.
Copyright: AEI/MM/Astrium Friedrichshafen