An end-to-end trajectory description of the LISA mission

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission is planned to measure gravitational waves by using a constellation of three spacecraft which stay at the points of an equilateral triangle revolving around the Sun for a period of at least five and up to 8.5 years. This mission description tells how the spacecraft are launched together and then separately transferred to their constellation positions using chemical propulsion to perform manoeuvres along the way. The paper further gives characteristics of the operational orbits (contrary to common perception, for example, the LISA configuration has no net rotation in inertial space), and discusses navigation and the effects of errors in the delivery to the constellation. The particular mission described here is the LISA Baseline 1 mission, which is based on operational orbits that minimize the average rate of change of the lengths of the arms of the triangular constellation over the five-year nominal mission. The launch period for mission described here is in December 2010, which is earlier than the launch period that will actually be used by the LISA project, so this mission must be considered only as characteristic of the mission architecture and not as a final plan