It’s not Halo, but damn it’s cool! Gaia Mission

milky-way-from-earth

Image of Milky Way behind Earth. Author unknown.

You know that feeling you get when you watch the best space sci-fi’s? That feeling that you are a mere speck in a vast universe of possibilities, filled with color, and alien landscapes and adventure? Mankind sits on the doorway of discovering fantasy-made-real, in exploring our universe, and Gaia is the next step in that direction.

Imagine having a camera that can focus in clearly on a human hair that is over 400 miles away. This is the equivalent of the power of the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft telescopes, launching in a couple weeks on December 20th, 2013 to focus in on objects in space.

Artist's illustration of the blue planet, HD 189733

Artist’s illustration of the blue planet, HD 189733. Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Kornmesser

Gaia’s purpose is to catalogue the positions, substances and movements of a vast number of celestial bodies in our Milky Way over a period of five years, creating a 3-D map that will be available to astronomers world-wide. The amount of information that Gaia will collect will be so extensive that it will take a team of 500 scientists working daily to compile and organize it for further use. Scientists hope to learn more about the origins of our galaxies and how the universe works, as well as discover new planets such as the blue gas giant, HD 189733, which is believed to have temperatures of over 1000 degrees Celsius and rain glass in 70000 kilometer-per-hour winds. The Gaia telescope is expected to survey more than a thousand million stars, creating our largest and most accurate map of the Galaxy to date.

Get more details about Gaia in the following videos, and follow the links below to learn more.

Gaia Space Telescope Soon to Map the Milky Way

See the 3D telescope which will map a billion stars

 

I know I will be watching Gaia’s journey of discovery with interest, will you?

 

Learn more about Gaia in the Gaia Overview page at European Space Agency’s Official site >>

Sources: Wikipedia, Space.com, European Space Agency,

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