L1 Lagrange Point – Spaceflight Now

DSCOVR resumes operations after eight-month outage

March 5, 2020

The Deep Space Climate Observatory has resumed regular observations after NOAA and NASA engineers uplinked a software patch to the spacecraft a million miles from Earth, restoring data on space weather and a daily series views of the sunlit side of our home planet.

LISA Pathfinder success bolsters plan for gravitational wave observatory

June 8, 2016

Europe’s LISA Pathfinder mission — a fundamental physics lab launched last year to a point a million miles from Earth — has demonstrated the mind-boggling technology required for a future space-based observatory to listen for faint, low-frequency vibrations emitted by invisible objects in the most distant pockets of the universe, scientists said this week.

European probe blasts off on gravitational wave demonstration

December 3, 2015

A solid-fueled Vega launcher fired through a low cloud deck and sped into orbit from the South American jungle early Thursday with a pioneering European spacecraft that marks a key step in a century-long quest to detect elusive gravitational waves predicted to permeate the cosmos.

Vega booster crowned with gravitational probe pathfinder

November 20, 2015

After criss-crossing Europe for a decade, the LISA Pathfinder satellite testbed has reached its last stop before launch in early December on a mission to demonstrate the delicate technologies required to detect elusive low-frequency gravitational waves rippling through the cosmos.

Launch campaign begins for Europe’s trailblazing gravity probe

October 12, 2015

A compact European space probe, already fitted with a propulsive boost stage to send it a million miles from Earth, has arrived at its French Guiana launch base for liftoff in early December aboard a solid-fueled Vega rocket.

DSCOVR space weather sentinel reaches finish line

June 8, 2015

A new space weather observatory launched in February has completed a four-month journey to an operating post a million miles from Earth, NOAA announced Monday.