These are snaps from the Gaia spacecraft mission team, another team. Gaia is an unmanned space observatory of ESA: the European Space Agency designed for astrometry. The mission aims to construct a 3D space catalog of approximately 1 billion astronomical objects with mainly stars, approximately 1% of the Milky Way population brighter than 20 G magnitudes, where G is the Gaia magnitude passband between about 400 and 1,000 nanometres light wavelengths. Additionally Gaia is expected to detect thousands to tens of thousands of Jupiter-sized planets beyond our solar system, 500,000 quasars and tens of thousands of new asteroids and comets within our solar system. The spacecraft will monitor each of its target stars about 70 times over a period of 5 years. Gaia will create a precise three-dimensional map of astronomical objects throughout the Milky Way and map their motions, which encode the origin and subsequent evolution of the Milky Way. The spectrophotometric measurements will provide the detailed physical properties of all stars observed, characterizing their luminosity, effective temperature, gravity and elemental composition. This massive stellar census will provide the basic observational data to tackle a wide range of important questions related to the origin, structure and evolutionary history of our galaxy. Successor to the Hipparcos mission the telescope is part of ESAs Horizon 2000 Plus long-term scientific program. Gaia was launched on December 19, 2013 by Arianespace using a Soyuz ST-B/Fregat-MT rocket flying from Kourou in French Guiana, northern part of South America. The spacecraft will be operated in a Lissajous orbit around the Sun–Earth L2 Lagrangian point. Gaia was launched by Arianespace, using a Soyuz ST-B rocket with a Fregat-MT upper stage, from the Ensemble de Lancement Soyouz at Kourou in French Guiana on December 19, 2013 at 09:12 UTC; 06:12 Guiana local time. The satellite separated from the rockets upper stage 43 minutes after launch at 09:54 UTC. The craft headed towards the Sun–Earth Lagrange point L2 located approximately 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, arriving there January 8, 2014. The L2 point provides the spacecraft with a very stable gravitational and thermal environment. There it uses a Lissajous orbit that avoids blockage of the Sun by the Earth, which would limit the amount of solar energy the satellite could produce through its solar panels, as well as disturb the spacecrafts thermal equilibrium. After launch, a 10-metre diameter sunshade was deployed. The sunshade always faces the Sun, thus cooling all telescope components and powering Gaia using solar panels on its surface. In October 2013 ESA had to postpone Gaias original launch date, due to a precautionary replacement of two of Gaias transponders. These are used to generate timing signals for the downlink of science data. A problem with an identical transponder, on a satellite already in orbit, necessitated their replacement and reverification once incorporated into Gaia. The rescheduled launch window was from December 17, 2013 to January 5, 2014, and Gaia slated for launch on December 19, 2013. Gaia was successfully launched on December 19, 2013 at 09:12 UTC. About 3 weeks after launch, on January 8, 2014, it reached its designated orbit around the SEL2 point. Testing and calibration phase, started while Gaia was en route to SEL2 point, will continue until May 2014. This Gaia project is not happen without the dedicated help of a tremendous team. These snaps show an amazing team of people. Good luck !! :-) Hisashi UMEKUBO/S.S.M.C/ESA/JAXA/M. Eng/First-class Radio Operator for general services
Posted on: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 15:44:08 +0000
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