Gaia leaves for retirement orbit
From 25 July 2014 to 15 January 2025, the Gaia space observatory performed high-precision measurements of nearly two billion stars from its Lissajous orbit around the L2 Lagrange point, 1.5 million km from Earth.
After 10.5 years of groundbreaking observations, Gaia’s cold gas supply for attitude control has been depleted. On 27 March 2025, Gaia will leave its Lissajous orbit and transition into a stable heliocentric orbit. Soon after, the spacecraft will be passivated, with its instruments and transmitters switched off.
While Gaia will no longer collect new data, its scientific mission is far from over! The team continues working on Gaia Data Release 4 (expected 2026) and the final legacy catalogue (to be published not before the end of 2030), ensuring that Gaia’s discoveries will shape astronomy for decades to come.
This video visualises how Gaia leaves its Lissajous orbit and enters its final heliocentric orbit.
This video was made with Gaia Sky (https://gaiasky.space) by Tiago Nogueira, Toni Sagristà, and Stefan Jordan.
Text: Stefan Jordan, Tiago Nogueira, Tineke Roegiers
The creators would like to thank Alessandro Masat and Ander Martinez from ESA for providing Gaia’s orbit and attitude data.
Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
★ Subscribe: http://bit.ly/ESAsubscribe and click twice on the bell button to receive our notifications.
Check out our full video catalog: http://bit.ly/SpaceInVideos
Follow us on Twitter: http://bit.ly/ESAonTwitter
On Facebook: http://bit.ly/ESAonFacebook
On Instagram: http://bit.ly/ESAonInstagram
On LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/ESAonLinkedIn
On Pinterest: https://bit.ly/ESAonPinterest
On Flickr: http://bit.ly/ESAonFlickr
We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
Copyright information about our videos is available here: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Terms_and_Conditions
Thanks to all team esa
Farewell, Gaia.
Bonne retraite a Gaïa.
pour votre travail formidable, et de faire avancer la science pour améliorer la compréhension de notre univers
Bravo a l'ESA
Music is loud and makes it hard to hear what is said.
At another bast motion that little motion.
Wow, no ambition to refuel it, huh?