LSC CONGRATULATES THE LISA PATHFINDER TEAM ON THE SATELLITE MISSION SUCCESS

6 September 2016 — The LIGO Scientific Collaboration would like to congratulate the LISA Pathfinder team on the fantastic success of their space satellite mission. This technology test mission has demonstrated acceleration noise at mHz frequencies which is better than required for the full LISA mission, and interferometric readout noise which far better than required. The Pathfinder triumph shows that LISA technology is sound, and paves the way towards multi-wavelength gravitational wave astronomy, as advocated in the recent US National Academy of Science “Review of Progress Toward the Decadal Survey Vision in New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics”. LISA, together with LIGO, its partners, and future ground-based detectors, will make it possible to “listen” to the universe over a frequency band that is more than 30 octaves wide. We can hardly wait to discover this unknown world!