The European Space Agency’s Milky Way-mapper Gaia has completed the sky-scanning phase of its mission, racking up more than three trillion observations of about two billion stars and other objects over the last decade to revolutionise the view of our home galaxy and cosmic neighbourhood.

Launched on 19 December 2013, Gaia’s fuel tank is now approaching empty – it uses about a dozen grams of cold gas per day to keep it spinning with pinpoint precision. But this is far from the end of the mission.

  • threelonmusketeersEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    I love that we launched a spacecraft with the sole purpose of measuring the positions of as many stars as possible, just because we could. Well done Gaia, and all the teams who worked on it.