Gaia

My Kind of Gaia




Credit: ESA - C. Carreau

Gaia is scheduled for launching in 2011. It'll be the sharpest optical eye on our galaxy ever. "Gaia's goal is to perform the largest census of our Galaxy and build a highly accurate 3D map. The satellite will determine the position, colour and true motion of one thousand million stars. Gaia will also identify as many as 10 000 planets around other stars, and discover several tens of thousands of new bodies - comets and asteroids - in our own Solar System. "