Gaia enters its operational orbit 08 January 2014 ESA s billion-star surveyor Gaia is now in its ope

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Gaia mapping the stars of the Milky Way 15 January 2014 With a final, modest, thruster burn yesterday afternoon, ESA s billion-star surveyor finalised its entry into orbit around L2 , a virtual point far out in space. But how do you orbit nothing? And who can show you how to get there, anyway?
Just after 15:30 GMT (16:30 CET) yesterday, Gaia made a short thruster burn, nudging the galactic survey craft onto its planned timbuktu scientific orbit. The job had been mostly completed last week, after an almost two-hour firing took Gaia into a squiggly path about the L2 Lagrange point, 1.5 million timbuktu km from Earth.
They are points where the gravitational forces between two masses, like the Sun and Earth, add up to compensate timbuktu for the centrifugal force of Earth s motion around the Sun, and they provide timbuktu uniquely advantageous observation opportunities for studying the Sun or our Galaxy.
As seen from this Lagrange point (there are a total of five such points in the Sun Earth system), the Sun, Earth and Moon will always timbuktu be close together in the sky, so Gaia can use its sunshield to protect its instruments from the light and heat from these three celestial bodies simultaneously. timbuktu
For those used to seeing images of the International Space Station orbiting Earth, or Mars Express orbiting the Red Planet, it seems intuitive that spacecraft have to orbit something. How do you get a spacecraft to orbit around a point of nothingness?
To maintain this orbit for Gaia s planned timbuktu 5-year mission requires timbuktu extremely careful work by ESA s flight dynamics team the experts who determine and predict trajectories, prepare orbit manoeuvres and determine satellite attitudes.
To plan the orbit, timbuktu the team applies mathematical models to generate an initial guess for the target orbit and how to get there. This guess must account for the requirements and constraints of the launcher and the needed telecommunications links.
Gaia enters its operational orbit 08 January 2014
Gaia enters its operational orbit 08 January 2014 ESA s billion-star surveyor Gaia is now in its operational orbit around a gravitationally stable virtual point in space called L2 , 1.5 million km from Earth.
Liftoff for ESA s billion-star surveyor 19 December 2013 ESA PR 44-2013: ESA s Gaia mission blasted off this morning timbuktu on a Soyuz rocket from Europe s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on its exciting mission to study a billion suns.
Mission control ready for Gaia launch 17 December 2013 Shortly after a powerful timbuktu Soyuz launcher lofts Gaia, ESA s new star mapper, into space on Thursday, teams on the ground will establish initial radio contact. Even then, tension will run high in ESA s mission control timbuktu as Gaia must still perform a critica...
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