Position sensors for flight testing of LISA drag-free control

Weber, William J.; Bortoluzzi, D.; Cavalleri, A.; Carbone, L.; Lio, Mauro Da; Dolesi, R.; Fontana, G.; Hoyle, C. D.; Hueller, M.; Vitale, S.

doi:10.1117/12.458564

Cited by 54 publications

(63 citation statements)

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“…The signals from/to the electrodes are coupled and controlled by a dedicated front-end-electronics in charge of sensing and actuation. For both these purposes the GRS is designed to minimally perturb the TMs while getting the maximal amount of information on TMs' position: the gaps between TMs and capacitors are 4 mm to optimize sensitivity to 2 nm Hz −1/2 and voltages are kept low to reduce the upper limit to sensing stiffness and static gravity gradients to 4 × 10 −7 s −2 [7]. Only AC voltage carriers are allowed on the TM in free-fall, banning dc contributions that would induce fluctuating forces at low frequency.…”

Section: The Inertial Sensor Corementioning

confidence: 99%

LISA Pathfinder: the experiment and the route to LISA

Armano¹,

Benedetti²,

Bogenstahl³

et al. 2009

Class. Quantum Grav.

114

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LISA Pathfinder (LPF) is a science and technology demonstrator planned by the European Space Agency in view of the LISA mission. As a scientific payload, the LISA Technology Package on board LPF will be the most precise geodesics explorer flown as of today, both in terms of displacement and acceleration sensitivity. The challenges embodied by LPF make it a unique mission, paving the way towards the space-borne detection of gravitational waves with LISA. This paper summarizes the basics of LPF, and the progress made in preparing its effective implementation in flight. We hereby give an overview of the experiment philosophy and assumptions to carry on the measurement. We report on the mission plan and hardware design advances and on the progress on detailing measurements and operations. Some light will be shed on the related data processing algorithms. In particular, we show how to single out the acceleration noise from the spacecraft motion perturbations, how to account for dynamical deformation parameters distorting the measurement reference and how to decouple the actuation noise via parabolic free flight.

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Section: The Inertial Sensor Corementioning

confidence: 99%

LISA Pathfinder: the experiment and the route to LISA

Armano¹,

Benedetti²,

Bogenstahl³

et al. 2009

Class. Quantum Grav.

114

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“…Appendix A: LISA Pathfinder GRS Sensing Electronics GRS sensing electronics (SE) provides position measurements of the GRS reference TM for all DoFs [10]. This is needed for precise drag-free spacecraft control on those axes not controlled by the optical metrology.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A symmetric design of the GRS has been selected for LPF in order to ensure stability down to 0.1 mHz and to avoid an excess of cross talk between non-science DoFs and the main science DoF [10,11]. Moreover the TM is 'suspended' with no contact to the EH.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This means that TM discharge is performed by UV lamp illumination [13] and that each TM is capacitively biased to a given voltage in order to allow for capacitive sensing of its motion. Since a number of physical effects perturbing the TM motion are inversely proportional to the gap between the TM and the EH [10][11][12], the LPF GRS has been designed to work with millimetre-wide sensing gaps, the widest sensing gaps ever implemented for a drag-free space mission [7,[14][15][16]. Biasing the TM results in a stiffness coupling, which allows the TM readout noise to leak into the TM acceleration noise.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Capacitive sensing of test mass motion with nanometer precision over millimeter-wide sensing gaps for space-borne gravitational reference sensors

Armano¹,

Audley²,

Auger³

et al. 2017

Phys. Rev. D

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Capacitive sensing of test mass motion with nanometer precision over millimeter-wide sensing gaps for space-borne gravitational reference sensors. Physical Review D, 96(6), 062004.There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it.http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/148989/ We report on the performance of the capacitive gap-sensing system of the Gravitational Reference Sensor (GRS) onboard the LISA Pathfinder (LPF) spacecraft. From in-flight measurements, the system has demonstrated a performance, down to 1 mHz, that is ranging between 0.7 aF Hz −1/2 and 1.8 aF Hz −1/2 . That translates into a sensing noise of the test mass motion within 1.2 nm Hz −1/2 and 2.4 nm Hz −1/2 in displacement and within 83 nrad Hz −1/2 and 170 nrad Hz −1/2 in rotation. This matches the performance goals for LPF and it allows the successful implementation of the gravitational waves observatory LISA. A 1/f tail has been observed for frequencies below 1 mHz, the tail has been investigated in detail with dedicated in-flight measurements and a model is presented in the paper. A projection of such noise to frequencies below 0.1 mHz shows that an improvement of performance at those frequencies is desirable for the next generation of GRS sensors for space-borne gravitational waves observation. 2PACS numbers: 04.80. Nn, 95.55.Ym

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“…They sit within a 6 degree-of-freedom capacitive position sensor and actuator, the gravitational reference sensor (GRS) [10,11]. The masses are separated from the walls of the sensor by gaps of between 2.9 and 4 mm and have no grounding wire.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Charge-Induced Force Noise on Free-Falling Test Masses: Results from LISA Pathfinder

Armano¹,

Audley²,

Auger³

et al. 2017

Phys. Rev. Lett.

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We report on electrostatic measurements made on board the European Space Agency mission LISA Pathfinder. Detailed measurements of the charge-induced electrostatic forces exerted on freefalling test masses (TMs) inside the capacitive gravitational reference sensor are the first made in a relevant environment for a space-based gravitational wave detector. Employing a combination of charge control and electric-field compensation, we show that the level of charge-induced acceleration noise on a single TM can be maintained at a level close to 1.0 fm s −2 Hz −1=2 across the 0.1-100 mHz frequency band that is crucial to an observatory such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). Using dedicated measurements that detect these effects in the differential acceleration between the two test masses, we resolve the stochastic nature of the TM charge buildup due to interplanetary cosmic rays and the TM charge-to-force coupling through stray PRL 118, 171101 (2017) P H Y S I C A L R E V I E W L E T T E R S week ending 28 APRIL 20170031-9007=17=118(17)=171101 (7) 171101-1 © 2017 American Physical Society electric fields in the sensor. All our measurements are in good agreement with predictions based on a relatively simple electrostatic model of the LISA Pathfinder instrument.

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Position sensors for flight testing of LISA drag-free control

Cited by 54 publications

References 0 publications

LISA Pathfinder: the experiment and the route to LISA

LISA Pathfinder: the experiment and the route to LISA

Capacitive sensing of test mass motion with nanometer precision over millimeter-wide sensing gaps for space-borne gravitational reference sensors

Charge-Induced Force Noise on Free-Falling Test Masses: Results from LISA Pathfinder

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