Gaia making a 3D-map of a Billion stars, new space observatory Options

[GravityWaves]

Have you guys heard about this one ?

Gaia observatory
link
link

QUOTE
"The satellite will determine the position, colour and true motion of one thousand million stars and over 100,000 objects in our Solar System. Gaia will also identify as many as 10,000 planets around other stars. "
QUOTE
"Gaia will measure distance (from parallax) out to ~100,000 parsecs; for stars ~10,000 pc away, with a Vmag of ~<15, Gaia will measure their distances accurate to ~10-20%."

You can also read about it here
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0407/06mapping/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_probe

or check the European space site

[GravityWaves]

Galactic census project
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/in...fobjectid=28820
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMZ4E1A6BD_index_0.html

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

What's the difference here with what HIPPARCOS did in the 1990s ?

[edstrick]

Far, far more targets, more color information for classification, much higher precision, radial velocity spectra of probably more targets than Hipparcos got in it's entire catalog.

[Mongo]

Indeed. By the end of its mission, GAIA will have mapped the 3D positions of the stars occupying a substantial portion of the entire galaxy. The benefits are many -- one that jumps to mind is that the distances to numerous Cepheids will be known to much higher accuracy than is currently the case, resulting in a much more well-established extragalactic distance scale.

Bill

[GravityWaves]

Testing the Gaia tracking concept
http://gaia.esa.int/science-e/www/object/i...fobjectid=42754

What has all this to do with NASA's WMAP? Well, the ground-based optical tracking concept must of course be tested. Like WMAP, Gaia will be located at the second Earth-Sun Lagrange point L2, about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. Like Gaia, WMAP has a deployable sunshield, partly covered with insulation material and partly with solar panels. The Gaia shield is about 11 metres in diameter and inclined by 45° to the Sun direction, that of WMAP is about 4.5 metres and inclined by 22.5°. With all these parameters, WMAP is a reasonable (photo-)model for the brightness and observability of Gaia. If the sunshield materials were strictly the same, and the proportion of insulation and solar panel areas similar, WMAP could be expected to be roughly 1.5-2 magnitudes fainter than Gaia. The actual brightness difference is still uncertain to some degree, however.

[GravityWaves]

Cornell Uni Library
http://eprintweb.org/S/article/astro-ph/0812.2354
arXiv

The promise of Gaia and how it will influence stellar ages

Carla Cacciari

Abstract. The Gaia space project, planned for launch in 2011, is one of the ESA cornerstone missions, and will provide astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic data of very high quality for about one billion stars brighter than V=20. This will allow to reach an unprecedented level of information and knowledge on several of the most fundamental astrophysical issues, such as mapping of the Milky Way, stellar physics (classification and parameterization), Galactic kinematics and dynamics, study of the resolved stellar populations in the Local Group, distance scale and age of the Universe, dark matter distribution (potential tracers), reference frame (quasars, astrometry), planet detection, fundamental physics, Solar physics, Solar system science. I will present a description of the instrument and its main characteristics, and discuss a few specific science cases where Gaia data promise to contribute fundamental improvement within the scope of this Symposium.

[GravityWaves]

Gaia video processing unit test model delivered

[GravityWaves]

Gaia to lift off from Europe’s Spaceport on a Soyuz launcher

16 December 2009
Gaia, ESA’s next-generation star mapper, will be carried into space by a Soyuz-STB/Fregat launch vehicle from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. David Southwood, ESA’s Director of Science and Robotic Exploration, signed the contract for the launch with Jean-Yves LeGall, Chairman and CEO of Arianespace, at ESA Headquarters in Paris yesterday.

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

That's the first step...
On ESA's Gaia space operations page the launch date is still set for December 2011 although other websites mention spring 2012.
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Operations/SEMK5HZTIVE_0.html

[GravityWaves]

Scientific Community Makes GREAT Progress Towards Gaia

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Scientif...s_Gaia_999.html

[Holder of the Tw...]

According to Spaceflight Now, Gaia is now scheduled for launch on September 29th with a Soyuz rocket at the French Guiana launch site.

[Holder of the Tw...]

Now this is unusual. Back on May 24th Spaceflight Now revised their launch schedule and moved Soyuz/Gaia forward ten days. According to them, launch of Gaia will now occur on September 19th.

Worldwide launch schedule

Edit 6/24: BUMMER! The launch schedule got updated again just three days after this posting, and Gaia was pushed waaaayyy back. Late in the year, no definite date.

Update 6/28: Spacecraft is complete, tested, and ready to ship out.

Testing Completed

Ready to depart

Update 8/8:
According to the latest GAIA -DPAC newsletter, they are going to ship most of the spacecraft out in early September, with the sunshield sent to South America a few days later. They are aiming to launch during the time period Nov 17th to Dec 5th.

Update 8/24

Most of the spacecraft has now arrived in French Guiana, and Spaceflight Now has a pretty good article about that, launch preparations and the mission as a whole.

Article

And now Gaia has its own blog site:

Semi official Gaia blog site

[antoniseb]

I saw on the ESA Gaia web page that they are replacing some part based on a problem on an already launched mission, and the new target launch date is Dec 20, 2013. Anyone know what the other craft was, and what the part is?

[Tom Womack]

I saw on the ESA Gaia web page that they are replacing some part based on a problem on an already launched mission, and the new target launch date is Dec 20, 2013. Anyone know what the other craft was, and what the part is?

The part is a clock generator for an X-band transponder; equivalent parts apparently went wrong in some O3b Networks communications satellites launched in June.