Parameter estimation in LISA Pathfinder operational exercises

TL;DR

This paper discusses the development and application of parameter estimation methods within the LTPDA toolbox to analyze realistic simulated data from the LISA Pathfinder mission, ensuring readiness for actual flight operations.

Contribution

It introduces the application of three different parameter estimation methods to operational exercise data, demonstrating their effectiveness in a realistic simulation environment.

Findings

Successful application of three parameter estimation methods

Validation of data analysis tools for mission readiness

Enhanced understanding of on-orbit experiment performance

Abstract

The LISA Pathfinder data analysis team has been developing in the last years the infrastructure and methods required to run the mission during flight operations. These are gathered in the LTPDA toolbox, an object oriented MATLAB toolbox that allows all the data analysis functionalities for the mission, while storing the history of all operations performed to the data, thus easing traceability and reproducibility of the analysis. The parameter estimation methods in the toolbox have been applied recently to data sets generated with the OSE (Off-line Simulations Environment), a detailed LISA Pathfinder non-linear simulator that will serve as a reference simulator during mission operations. These operational exercises aim at testing the on-orbit experiments in a realistic environment in terms of software and time constraints. These simulations, so called operational exercises, are the last verification step before translating these experiments into tele-command sequences for the spacecraft, producing therefore very relevant datasets to test our data analysis methods. In this contribution we report the results obtained with three different parameter estimation methods during one of these operational exercises.