The Gaia telescope, which has been used to map the Milky Way since 2014, was officially retired last Thursday (27).
Experts from the mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) left the telescope in orbit around the Sun after more than a decade of service in mapping stars.
The mission, launched in December 2013, began mapping stars about six months later and concluded its activities on January 15, 2025.
The Gaia telescope had to be retired because it had run out of fuel. Fortunately, it leaves behind an impressive legacy of space data that will be used for many years.
“This is something that now supports almost all of astronomy,” said Anthony Brown, an astronomer at Leiden University in the Netherlands and leader of the Gaia data processing and analysis group, to The New York Times.
“It’s a bittersweet moment when a mission stops finding data. But the mission itself is far from over,” said Johannes Sahlmann, a physicist at ESA and scientist on the Gaia project, to The New York Times.
Photo and video: ESA. This content was created with the help of AI and reviewed by the editorial team.
