Home > Missions and Case Studies > Gaia

Gaia

Mission Overview

Gaia has made more than three trillion observations of two billion stars and other objects throughout our Milky Way galaxy and beyond, mapping their motions, luminosity, temperature and composition.

RAL Space Involvement

Set-up of the data applications centre and processing of photometric data in collaboration with industrial and academic partners. Supporting the exploitation of scientific data to be yielded from the mission.

Partners

ESA, IoA, Cambridge University

Focus

Space exploration

Launch date

19 December 2013

GAIA Credit: ESA

View more missions

ERS-1

ERS-1 was the first in a series of ESA Earth Observation satellites in the European Earth Observation program. ERS-1 primarily monitored ocean and ice levels using all-weather high resolution active...

Cluster II

Cluster II is an ESA mission to study the Earth's magnetosphere and the way in which the solar wind affects the Earth. It consists of four identical spacecraft orbiting in...

Vigil

ESA's Vigil mission will monitor our active and unpredictable Sun to protect vital infrastructure on Earth, in space as well as space explorers from its violent outbursts.

GIOVE‑A

GIOVE-A was the first test for Galileo, the first positioning, navigation and timing system for civil use consisting of a constellation of 24 satellites. GIOVE-A tested critical Galileo instruments and...

ExoMars 2016

ExoMars (2016) was a combination of the Trace Gas Orbiter and the landing Demonstrator Module Schiaparelli. They flew to Mars in search of methane and other trace gases.

SpeQtre

SpeQtre aims to test communications so secure that any attempt to intercept them is instantly detectable – a fundamental law of physics that makes the technology unhackable even by future...

Chandrayaan‑1

Chandrayaan-1 was the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO's) first mission to the Moon, launched in October 2008 on board a Polar Satellite launch vehicle from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre...

PUNCH

The Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission is a NASA small-explorer (SMEX) mission: its primary science goal is to fully discern the cross-scale physical processes that unify...