On-orbit alignment and diagnostics for the LISA Technology Package

Abstract

This paper presents a procedure to perform fully autonomous on-orbit alignment of the interferometer on board the LISA Technology Package (LTP). LTP comprises two free-floating test masses as inertial sensors that additionally serve as end mirrors of a set of interferometers. From the output signals of the interferometers, a subset has been selected to obtain alignment information of the test masses. Based on these signals, an alignment procedure was developed and successfully tested on the engineering model of the optical bench. Furthermore, operation procedures for the characterization of critical on-orbit properties of the optical metrology system (e.g. fibre noise) have been established.