After its symbolic handover on 18 July and the start of the nominal science operations phase, the Gaia flag has arrived at ESAC where members of the Science Operations Centre (SOC) team received it.

At ESAC the Gaia telemetry, sent by the Mission Operations Centre (MOC) in Darmstadt, is unpacked and processed by the Initial Data Treatment and First Look pipelines. The latter serves to monitor the instrument health of Gaia in great detail while the former prepares the raw telemetry for further processing by the DPAC Coordination Units. DPCE, one of Gaia's six Data Processing Centres and the hub for Gaia's science ground segment, is also based at ESAC.

The flag was received by part of the Gaia ESAC team (from left to right): Ralf Kohley, Cian Crowley, Gonzalo Gracia, Uwe Lammers, Sebastian Els, Eugenio Salguero, Hassan Siddiqui, Wouter van Reeven, Neil Cheek, Enrique Utrilla, Paul Balm, Gabriele Comoretto, Jose Osinde, Nana Bach, Alexander Hutton

Front row (from left to right): Emmanuel Joliet, Juan Manuel Fleitas, Wil O'Mullane