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The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna Pathfinder (LPF) main observable, labeled Δg, is the differential force per unit mass acting on the two test masses under free fall conditions after the contribution of all non-gravitational forces has been compensated. At low frequencies, the differential force is compensated by an applied electrostatic actuation force, which then must be subtracted from the measured acceleration to obtain Δg. Any inaccuracy in the actuation force contaminates the residual acceleration. This study investigates the accuracy of the electrostatic actuation system and its impact on the LPF main observable. It is shown that the inaccuracy is mainly caused by the rounding errors in the waveform processing and also by the random error caused by the analog to digital converter random noise in the control loop. Both errors are one order of magnitude smaller than the resolution of the commanded voltages. We developed a simulator based on the LPF design to compute the close-to-reality actuation voltages and, consequently, the resulting actuation forces. The simulator is applied during post-processing the LPF data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LISA Pathfinder (LPF) was a technology pioneering mission designed to test key technologies required for gravitational wave detection in space. In the low frequency regime (milliHertz and below), where space-based gravitational wave observatories will operate, temperature fluctuations play a crucial role since they can couple into the interferometric measurement and the test masses' free-fall accuracy in many ways. A dedicated temperature measurement subsystem, with noise levels in 10  |$\mu$| K Hz−1/2 down to 1 mHz was part of the diagnostics unit onboard LPF. In this paper we report on the temperature measurements throughout mission operations, characterize the thermal environment, estimate transfer functions between different locations, and report temperature stability (and its time evolution) at frequencies as low as 10  |$\mu$| Hz, where typically values around 1 K Hz−1/2 were measured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we summarise the presentations given during the 'Education and Public Outreach on Gravitational-Wave Astronomy' parallel session at the GR-20/Amaldi conference, held in Warsaw, July 2013. The talks presented demonstrate the wide range of education and public outreach activities being undertaken in the field of gravitational-wave astronomy-across science festivals, science education centers, junior schools and high schools, colleges and universities, via both face-to-face delivery and (increasingly) the internet and social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we describe the current status of the LISA Pathfinder mission, a precursor mission aimed at demonstrating key technologies for future spacebased gravitationalwave detectors, like LISA. Since much of the flight hardware has already been constructed and tested, we will show that performance measurements and analysis of these flight components lead to an expected performance of the LISA Pathfinder which is a significant improvement over the mission requirements, and which actually reaches the LISA requirements over the entire LISA Pathfinder measurement band. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]