Excerpt from BBC article:
"The mission to demonstrate technologies needed to detect gravitational waves in space has been a stunning success.
The Lisa Pathfinder satellite was sent into orbit to test elements of the laser measurement system that would be used on a future observatory.
Performance objectives were exceeded on the very first day the equipment was switched on."
The European Space Agency (ESA) has a brief article on the science challenges and new technologies. see:
A perfectly still laboratory in space
As an aside, the orbits of the three satellites (two yet to be launched) will be at various Lagrange Points (L1, L2, L3, ... ) which are known to be flat space-time points. This makes the going easier, since tidal forces are minimized as well as minimizing any micro-gravity.
An explanation of the Lagrange Points, where these spacecraft will be sitting "on" in space-time, is given on the ESA site link:
A diagram of several of these point is below. Notice that two bodies have 5 Lagrange Points. Below you can see the earth-Moon L1, L2, ..., L5 and also the Sun-Earth SEL1 and SEL2. The SEL3,...SEL5 are not shown.
also, here is a photo showing the saddles, peaks and troughs with a fictional representation of space-time that is dramatically enlarged. The system shown below is the Lagrange Points for the Earth-Moon System.
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