On december 3rd 2015 at 04:04 GMT the LISA Pathfinder satellite lifted off from European Space Agency's space center in Kourou, Guiana. After 10 years of designing, building and testing, LISA Pathfinder had a picture book launch on a Vega rocket which propelled the satellite into a safe low earth orbit for it's further journey to Lagrange point L1 about 1.5 million km from Earth.

The LISA Pathfinder science and operations team watched the launch both in Kourou and in European Space Operations Center / ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany.