Gaia is an ambitious mission to chart a three-dimensional map of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, in the process revealing the composition, formation and evolution of the Galaxy. Gaia will provide unprecedented positional and radial velocity measurements with the accuracies needed to produce a stereoscopic and kinematic census of about one billion stars in our Galaxy and throughout the Local Group. This amounts to about 1 per cent of the Galactic stellar population.

Gaia is a global space astrometry mission. Its goal is to make the largest, most precise three-dimensional map of our Galaxy by surveying an unprecedented number of stars - more than a thousand million. Gaia will conduct a census of a thousand million stars in our Galaxy, monitoring each of its target stars about 70 times over a five-year period. It will precisely chart their positions, distances, movements, and changes in brightness. It is expected to discover hundreds of thousands of new celestial objects, such as extra-solar planets and failed stars called brown dwarfs. Within our own Solar System, Gaia should also observe hundreds of thousands of asteroids.

Gaia has been prepared in Toulouse and shipped to Kourou this summer for its flight on top of a Soyuz launcher from Europe's Space port in French Guiana.

Due to recently-discovered technical issues, ESA has decided to perform additional verifications on its Gaia satellite, and therefore requested that Arianespace postpone the Gaia launch, currently scheduled for November 20, 2013.

A new launch date will be announced as soon as the availability of the satellite is confirmed.

This video explains Gaia's mission with interviews with Giuseppe Sarri, Gaia Project Manager, ESA and Timo Prusti, Gaia Project Scientist, ESA.



Some further explanation about the 3D camers:



Official ESA/GAIA website:

[link to sci.esa.int]

Further links (re. delayed launch):
[link to www.popsci.com]

[link to www.redorbit.com]

[link to truthdive.com]


Space-tards , may this be PIN-worthy ??