Today astronomers are saying goodbye to a remarkable spacecraft: a telescope that has observed nearly two billion stars in its 12-year life. The Gaia Observatory from the European Space Agency (ESA) ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Artist impression of ESA's Gaia satellite observing the Milky Way. The background image of the ...

After more than a decade of mapping billions of stars across the Milky Way and beyond, a groundbreaking spacecraft is retiring. The European Space Agency’s space-based observatory known as Gaia is ...

The last commands have been sent to the ESA's Gaia satellite and, after a dozen years scanning the galaxy, the spacecraft is shutting down its computers and boosting out into a retirement orbit around ...

Europe's star-mapping Gaia space observatory has entered its final orbit, after gathering valuable cosmic data for more than a decade. The spacecraft's control team at the European Space Operations ...