News 2023

Gaia Newsletter issue 31

21 December 2023 Gaia's newsletter #31 is out! Happy Gaia launch anniversary everyone and happy holidays! read more

2023-12-19 Gaia celebrates 10 years in space!

19 December 2023 Having been launched on 19 December 2013, Gaia has now spent 10 years in space! Today we celebrate these 10 amazing years with 10 science topis, starting with Gaia's impact on Earth with stellar occultation, and moving out into the Solar System and further into the Milky Way and beyond. Gaia has impacted almost every field in astronomy, with... read more

2023-12-19 Ten science topics to celebrate Gaia's ten years in space

19 December 2023 Celebrate with us Gaia's 10 years in space with stories on stellar occultation, asteroids and moons, spiral arms and structure, stellar companions, special stars, stellar DNA, 3D motion, Milky Way satellites, Gaia's galaxies and cosmology with Gaia. Full details and more... read more

2023-12-14 Gaia's 10 years in space kick off with a celebratory logo

14 December 2023 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5... days left to ESA Gaia's 10 years in space. Let's start the celebrations with this special Gaia Mission logo designed by Mariasole Agazzi and Albert Masip Vela in collaboration with Rosanna Sordo and Federico di Giacomo, members of the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium. More coming up in the following days... keep... read more

Gaia Newsletter #30

24 November 2023 Gaia Newsletter Issue 30 is out now! read more

2023-11-24 Science Advisory Membership - Call for expressions of interest

24 November 2023 ESA has published a call for expressions of interest to become a member of the "Astronomy Working Group", the "Solar System and Exploration Working Group" and the "Space Science Advisory Committee". Through this call, the ESA Director of Science invites scientists affiliated with institutions in the ESA Member States to express their interest in... read more

2023-11-07 Issues with ESA email infrastructure - resend emails please

6 November 2023 The email traffic passing through our ESA email infrastructure was heavily affected in the period between Sunday 5 November 00:01 CET and Monday 6 November 19:30 CET. If you send an email to an ESA person, to our Gaia Helpdesk, or to any of our Gaia mailing lists with an address ending with @cosmos.esa.int or @sciops.esa.int, then please be... read more

Gaia Newsletter #29

31 October 2023 Gaia Newsletter Issue 29 is out now! read more

2023-10-31 Gaia scanning law published for the full operational mission period

31 October 2023 The Gaia scanning law pointings for the data collection period underlying Gaia (E)DR3 are available from the Gaia ESA Archive in a table named "gaiadr3.commanded_scan_law". Here we provide an additional and complementary data set, namely the commanded scanning law pointings over the full mission interval (from 2014-07-25 10:31:26 TCB to... read more

2023-10-31 Gaia Project Scientist Vacancy notice

31 October 2023 At the European Space Agency, there is an opening for the position Gaia project scientist. The vacancy notice can be found here from the ESA jobs website. Deadline for the application is 6 November. The location for this position would be either ESAC (Madrid, Spain) or ESTEC (Noordwijk, The Netherlands). Full details regarding the profile can... read more

Gaia Newsletter #28

13 October 2023 Gaia Newsletter Issue 28 is out now! read more

2023-10-13 Gaia FPR known issue published

13 October 2023 A Gaia FPR known issue was added recently on the topic of solar system objects: Error in the description field of epoch_state_vector of gaiafpr.sso_source. In the description of the field epoch_state_vector of the sso_source table, the origin of the epoch is wrongly given as JD2457907.5 TCB. The correct value is JD2455197.5 TCB (1 January... read more

2023-10-13 Gaia Focused Product Release is out!

13 October 2023 On 10 October 2023 Gaia published its Focused Product Release. On the overview page, links to all relevant information related to this release are provided. The documentation for this release is covered mostly by the Gaia Focused Product Release papers, for which links are available from the Gaia FPR papers page. The data release documentation... read more

Gaia Newsletter #27

29 September 2023 Gaia Newsletter Issue 27 is out now! read more

2023-09-29 ESA Archival Research Visitor Programme

29 September 2023 To increase the scientific return from its space science missions, the European Space Agency (ESA) welcomes applications from scientists interested in pursuing research projects based on data publicly available in the ESA Space Science Archives. The ESA Archival Research Visitor Programme is open to scientists, at all career levels, affiliated... read more

2023-09-22 Gaia Focused Product release update

22 September 2023 ​​​​​​​On Wednesday 20 September the webpage listing all planned events for the Gaia Focused Product Release was published. Interested to join one of the events, or watch some of the recordings afterwards? The page will be updated with the direct links to the livestreams available (once known) and will help you find your way to the different... read more

Gaia Newsletter #26

28 August 2023 Gaia Newsletter Issue 26 is out now! read more

2023-08-28 ESA research fellowships in space science

28 August 2023 ESA's postdoctoral Research Fellowship programme offers early-career scientists and engineers the possibility to carry out research in a variety of disciplines related to Space Science, Space Applications or Space Technology. The Research Fellowships in Space Science specifically offer the opportunity to contribute to ESA's endeavour to explore... read more

2023-08-28 Gaia DPAC Solar System Objects team honoured by the "Asteroid Comet Meteorites" Science Organization Committee

28 August 2023 On 21 June 2023, the Asteroid Comet Meteorites SOC honoured the collaborators of the Solar System Objects (SSO) team of the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium. They did so with asteroid nominations, naming 4 asteroids after members of the Gaia DPAC SSO team. (30264) Galluccio (32607) Portell (33437) Ordenovic (35623)... read more

2023-08-28 Gaia Symposium at EAS

28 August 2023 On 10 and 11 July 2023, the symposium "Gaia: The (TWO) Billion Star Galaxy Census: The Magic of Gaia DR3" was held. A wealth of research was presented at this symposium making use of Gaia's latest data releases. More details were presented on the expected contents of Gaia's Focused Product Release as well, expected on 10 October 2023. The... read more

2023-08-24 Gaia mission news

24 August 2023 Gaia continues to operate nominally toward its 10th launch anniversary on 19 December this year. The current estimate of the remaining lifetime is about 1.5 years. In the first quarter of 2025 Gaia is expected to run out of cold gas, the gas used to maintain its highly precise scanning attitude. Data processing performed by Gaia DPAC is... read more

2023-08-23 Share your feedback on ESA Astronomy Science Archives and ESASky

23 August 2023 Do you use any of the ESA Astronomy science archives or ESASky? If so, we are eagerly seeking your valuable feedback! At ESA we are committed to providing you with the best possible experiences when accessing and utilizing our Astronomy Science Archives and the ESASky tool. To ensure that the services we offer meet your needs and expectations... read more

2023-08-11 How Gaia helps measure space weather

11 August 2023 ​​​​​​​Yesterday a story was published by ESA Enabling & Support about Solar System fingerprints found in memories of ESA flotilla. Gaia's engineering data can be used to measure the space weather at L2. A paper discussing this topic has been published: "Solar Energetic Particle Events Detected in the Housekeeping Data of the European Space... read more

2023-07-12 Contents description for Gaia's Focused Product Release

12 July 2023 The following pages were published for the Gaia Focused Product Release: an overview page to lead you to the relevant material on this release, a papers page listing the exptected papers and a contents summary page, where more details on the expected data products is given. read more

Gaia Newsletter #25

1 June 2023 Gaia Newsletter #25 is out now. read more

2023-05-26 Gaia Focused Product Release planned for 10 October 2023

26 May 2023 ​​​​​​​Gaia's data release scenario page has been updated with the planned date for publication of the Gaia Focused Product Release. Save the date: Tuesday 10 October, new Gaia data will become available. The Focused Product Release will be consisting of: Updated astrometry for Solar System objects, Astrometry and photometry from engineering... read more

2023-05-10 GaiaUnlimited Community workshop in October

10 May 2023 From October 4 to 6 2023 the second GaiaUnlimited community workshop will take place in Torino, Italy. The GaiaUnlimited project aims at determining the Gaia survey selection function and providing corresponding data and tools. The workshop's theme is the Gaia selection function and how to use it. This event will be a three-day workshop and... read more

2023-05-05 Known issue on two false-positive sources in the astrometric binary solutions.

10 May 2023 During validation of epoch astrometry for Gaia DR4, an error was discovered, that had already had an impact on the Gaia DR3 non-single star results. The investigation showed that two specific targets suffered of this software bug. We can conclude that the solutions for Gaia DR3 4698424845771339520 (WD 0141-675; also the entry in... read more

2023-05-08 Team Achievement Award for the Gaia mission

8 May 2023 The Gaia misson won the 2019 Team Achievement Award. Celebrations were delayed due to the pandemic and took place today on 8 May 2023. A space mission is constructed and thought through by many people, from industry to the science community and ESA, from engineers to financial and IT. Together we make it happen! read more

2023-04-04 Archival Research Visitor Programme

4 April 2023 To increase the scientific return from its space science missions, the European Space Agency (ESA) welcomes applications from scientists interested in pursuing research projects based on data publicly available in the ESA Space Science Archives. The ESA Archival Research Visitor Programme is open to scientists, at all career levels, affiliated... read more

2023-03-13 6th DPAC consortium meeting kicks off

13 March 2023 Gaia's Data Processing and Analysis Consortium is responsible for the transfer of the Gaia raw data into Gaia scientific data products, made available from the Gaia archive and its partner data centres as data releases. The consortium consists of more than 450 scientists, engineers and software developers from across Europe and beyond. Due to... read more

2023-02-20 Gaia Archive shortly down for maintenance

20 February 2023 Tomorrow, Tuesday 21 February between 11:00 and 11:30 CET, the Gaia Archive will be shortly down for maintenance. read more

Gaia Newsletter #24

7 February 2023 Gaia Newsletter #24 is out now. read more

2023-02-07 Updates to the Gaia Archive data tables

7 February 2023 Today, three tables have been added to the Gaia Data Release 3 catalogue in the Gaia Archive: (1) A new table chemical_cartography was added derived from the paper "Gaia Data Release 3: Chemical cartography of the Milky Way" (2) A new table vari_spurious_signals was added derived from the paper "Gaia Data Release 3: Gaia scan-angle dependent... read more

2023-02-07 Graduate Trainee positions at ESA

7 February 2023 The ESA graduate trainee positions for 2023 have been published, and one of them covers activities for the Gaia mission. Applications for the position "Young Graduate Trainee in Machine-Learning Techniques Application for Astrometry - Gaia" are welcome. Deadline for applications is 28 February 2023. If you have any questions on the ESA graduate... read more