Gaia’s first launch anniversary

Source: ESA Cosmos

December 19, 2013, Soyuz ST-B rocket, with Gaia’s satellite onboard, was launched from the French Guiana Space Centre. This is how Gaia mission started.

One year later, and after being correctly inserted at Lagrange L2 point, Gaia is scanning the sky and cartographying some 40 million stars per day. After instrument calibration, Gaia started routine operations phase last July 25. Fuel levels and current consumption patterns indicate the mission could last for more than the forecasted 5 years.

During this year, Gaia has  recorded 11.1 billion transits with 120.5 billion astrometric, 22.2 billion photometric and 3.3 billion spectroscopic measurements with its 106 CCDs on board. In the routine phase the corresponding numbers are 6.76 billion transits with 73.4, 13.5 and 2 billion astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic measurements. The total data volume from Gaia so far is 9.2 TB. The whole sky has been observed at least once in the routine phase. The spacecraft is currently performing astrometry and photometry for stars brighter than G = 20.7 mag and spectroscopy till GRVS = 16.2 mag.

On the occasion of the first launch anniversary, six members of the Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC) share their launch and commissioning memories. Read more…