Farewell, Gaia!

The European Space Agency (ESA) has powered down its Gaia spacecraft after more than a decade spent gathering data. Data that are now being used to unravel the secrets of our home galaxy. On 27 March 2025, Gaia’s control team at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre carefully switched off the spacecraft’s subsystems and sent it into a ‘retirement orbit’ around the Sun. Though the spacecraft’s operations are now over, the scientific exploitation of Gaia’s data has just begun. Two large data releases are still planned: Gaia Data Release 4 in December 2026 (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/d...) and the final legacy catalogue is expected not before the end of 2030. Video created in the framework of the ERC-Consolidator Grant (2021-2026) "Visual Trust: Reliability, accountability and forgery in scientific, religious and social images" by the University of Barcelona. Direction, Research and Camera by Alkim Erol. Editing by Òscar Hidalgo. Research Coordinator: Roger Canals. Special thanks to Gaia Team, Gaia Collaboration, all the Gaia Space Mission Colleagues at ESA and all the participants of the Gaia Passivation Event at ESOC. Archive Videos and Images: The insert images and videos are derived from European Space Agency Archive and the copyright of these images belongs to ESA: https://www.esa.int/esatv/Videos_for_... Also recognised are the image and video contributions by ESA/Gaia/DPAC, Gaia Sky, Zhuoxiao Wang, Stefan Payne-Wardenaar as shared under the CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO license. Gaia Goes on' video is credited to ESOC Musicians Club and ESOC film Club. All images are used with permission. Music and Sound: "Space Ambience" freesound_community / Jupiter" Elysium Sound / "Science and Research" DIMMYSA / "Motivational Inspirational 80s background" ABSounds / Freesound - https://freesound.org / Pixabay - https://pixabay.com / Free Music Archive - https://freemusicarchive.org / SoundEffectsFactory More information: https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/... https://www.esa.int/Science_Explorati... https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/s... https://www.visualtrust.ub.edu/ https://www.visualtrust.ub.edu/events... Credit: Visual Trust, University of Barcelona, ESA/Gaia/DPAC We are Europe's gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe's space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related. Copyright information about our videos is available here: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Te... #esa #gaia