Liftoff of Vega Flight VV06 with LISA Pathfinder

The Vega mission with Europe’s pioneering LISA Pathfinder technology demonstrator is now underway following tonight’s liftoff from the Spaceport in French Guiana. LISA Pathfinder will be placed in an initial elliptical Earth orbit at 1 hr., 45 min., 33 sec. after liftoff. The spacecraft’s own propulsion module then will be utilized to reach the operational orbit around the first Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L1) – located approximately 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. Produced to study the ripples in space-