ESA's Gaia Spacecraft Completes Mission, Enters Retirement Orbit After Decade of Mapping Milky Way

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia space observatory has concluded its mission after more than a decade of charting nearly two billion stars to create a 3D map of the Milky Way. On March 27, the control team at the European Space Operations Centre initiated the final phase, switching off Gaia's subsystems and maneuvering it into a safe retirement orbit around the sun. Gaia's mission, launched in 2013, has yielded discoveries, including evidence of galactic mergers, identification of star clusters, tracking of asteroids, and detection of exoplanets and black holes. The spacecraft's final maneuver ensures it remains at least 10 million kilometers from Earth for the next century, preventing interference with other space telescopes like James Webb and Euclid. Although data collection ceased in January, scientists will continue analyzing the data. The fourth data release is scheduled for 2026, with the final legacy catalogs expected around 2030. These catalogs will continue to shape understanding of the cosmos for decades.