Gaia was approved in 2000 as a European Space Agency Cornerstone Mission within ESA’s Horizon 2000 Plus science programme. In future, Gaia’s quasar measurements will redefine the fundamental reference frame used for all astronomical coordinate systems. Gaia also measures some 500,000 distant quasars, providing a connection to the reference frame currently defined in radio wavelengths. And by watching the large-scale motion of stars within the Galaxy, they probe the distribution of dark matter. Scientists also expect to discover thousands of exoplanets beyond the Solar System, tens of thousands of failed stars (brown dwarfs) and more than 20,000 exploding stars (supernovae). Gaia measures the position and velocity of more than one billion stars in the Milky Way – about 1% of the stars in the Galaxy – charts the three-dimensional distribution of these stars and determines their brightness, temperature, composition and motion through space. In so doing, it will also detect new asteroids and extragalactic sources such as quasars, find new exoplanets and even provide some tests of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.įrom the information obtained, astronomers will be able to understand much more about the structure, contents and evolution of our Galaxy, how it came into being and why it is the way it is. The Gaia mission will survey about one billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy to create the largest and most accurate three-dimensional map of the Galaxy ever obtained.
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