The intrepid mapping mission has collected more than three trillion observations that'll change the way we see our neck of the cosmic woods. Reading time 3 minutes The European Space Agency’s Gaia ...

The European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft is on a mission to map a billion stars. But as it stares out into space, it also spies a lot of closer objects. The newly released image above shows the ...

In March 2025, the Gaia mission stopped collecting data from space. The influence of this mission is huge, especially in studying the Milky Way Galaxy, according to Earth.com. The insights provided by ...

Most of us have looked up at the night sky and wondered how far away the stars are or in what direction they are moving. The truth is, scientists don’t know the exact positions or velocities of the ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Europe's star-mapping spacecraft, Gaia, streaks across the Milky Way in a new image captured by a ...

In 2013, the European Space Agency launched the Gaia astronomical observatory. Its mission: Map the positions and motions of a billion stars in our galaxy. Yes, a billion. They recently released a ...

Released to eagerly waiting astronomers around the world, the initial catalogue of 1.15 billion stars is “both the largest and the most accurate full-sky map ever produced,” said French astronomer ...

A £2 billion European probe that will map more than a billion stars in 3D has been launched into our galaxy. The two-tonne observatory blasted into orbit on a Russian Soyuz rocket from the European ...

A newly released image from the European Space Agency’s Gaia star-mapping mission shows a full-sky view of our Milky Way galaxy and neighboring galaxies in color. (ESA / Gaia / DPAC) The European ...