ESA title

The mission

Gaia is creating an extraordinarily precise three-dimensional map of more than a thousand million stars throughout our Milky Way galaxy and beyond, mapping their motions, luminosity, temperature and composition. This huge stellar census will provide the data needed to tackle an enormous range of important questions related to the origin, structure and evolutionary history of our galaxy.

 

  • Launch: 19 December 2013
  • Orbit: L2 Lagrange point
  • Previous data release milestones:
    Data Release 1: 14 September 2016
    Data Release 2: 25 April 2018
    Early Data Release 3: 3 December 2020
    Data Release 3: 13 June 2022
    Focused Product Release: 10 October 2023
Gaia

Latest

Science & Exploration

Sailing among the stars – Gaia's role in discovering distan…

22/04/2024 1608 views 13 likes
Read
Science & Exploration

Sleeping giant surprises Gaia scientists

16/04/2024 28825 views 63 likes
Read
Science & Exploration

Gaia unravels the ancient threads of the Milky Way

21/03/2024 12511 views 51 likes
Read
Gaia observes the Milky Way
Science & Exploration

Gaia’s decade of discoveries: unravelling the intricacies o…

19/12/2023 5706 views 85 likes
Read
Science & Exploration

New Gaia release reveals rare lenses, cluster cores and unf…

10/10/2023 22545 views 93 likes
Read

More items

Science & Exploration

10 times more stars: Comparing two Gaia views of Omega Centauri (slider)

10/10/2023 1299 views 28 likes
Open item

About Gaia