He gave us the best map of the Milky Way. Now the spatial vehicle Gaia is retired orbit

After more than a decade of innovative delivery discovered by the distant things of our galaxy, the Gaia space vehicle officially completed its mission and was closed on March 27 due to its depleted fuel supply.

For his team on the ground, it was an sweet and sour moment.

“I worked with the space vehicle that has sent data in the past 11 years, so it is a nice change,” said Anthony Brown, a Dutch astronomer who guides the processing and analysis of Gaia’s data, analysis, How it happens It hosts Nil Köksal.

“On the other hand, it is also beautiful (which) something is closed, and there is still a lot of work to look at the future in terms of processing all the data that are still coming.”

Gaia, launched in 2013 by the European Space Agency (ESA), was stationed about 1.5 million kilometers, in a region known as the second point of Lagrange (L2). There, he orbit the sun and had an optimal point of view to observe the universe.

Bringing two telescopes, the mission of the space vehicle was to map the Milky Way, offering insights on the composition of our galaxy at home and how it has evolved, formed and is structured.

Unlike the James Webb spatial telescope which is also in orbit in L2, which produces illustrious images, Gaia he gave Detailed measurements of stars throughout the galaxy.

“Missions that produce images such as the James Webb spatial telescope … They speak much more directly on people’s imagination, so there is a good chance that they have heard of those missions and perhaps not of Gaia, “said Brown.

But he says that Gaia’s contributions have “overcome the expectations of most people”.

What Gaia reported

What was originally destined to be a mission of five years doubled.

During that mission, Gaia scanned the sky and recorded data of almost two billion stars by precisely measuring their position, distance, movement, chemical composition and brightness.

“If you want to know something about a star in the sky, look for her in the Gaia catalog,” said Brown.

But the space vehicle also offered several surprising results.

Gaia’s data revealed possible causes of the deformed form of the Milky Way, identified New star clusters and have contributed to the discovery of planets outside our solar system And black holes. He also mapped millions of galaxies and traced hundreds of thousands of asteroids and comets.

“I think he has already overlapped what we expected,” said Brown.

He also achieved his main goal of drawing the largest and most precise map of the Milky Way, providing the clearer reconstructed vision of how our galaxy may appear to an external observer.

Leave the retired inheritance behind

Astronomes release Gaia’s data in Batch since 2016 and its final set will not be released before 2030.

Sarah Gallagher, director of the Institute for Earth and Space Exploration at Western University in London, Ontario, who was not involved in the expedition, says that Canadian researchers analyzed Gaia’s data.

“What is really exciting to have these long missions with beautiful data sets that are then shared with anyone in the world, is that people will find things that nobody expected,” Gallagher said.

“I have a student who is working with Gaia given at this moment … he will find really interesting things.”

His inheritance will also live through the follow-up missions that will continue the work done by Gaia, says Gallagher.

The day Gaia was closed and before all the communication was cut, the crew sent Gaia – now he moved to his orbit of retirement around the sun, one last word.

Brown’s message was: “Goodbye to an incredible spatial vehicle that revolutionized the astronomy of the 21st century”.