Artist’s impression of the Gaia observatory
Artist’s impression of the Gaia observatory
By 2018, Gaia, the new European Space Agency (ESA) space observatory, will have measured the positions, distances and motion of over one billion stars and, for the first time, created a 3D map of the Milky Way. In addition to its contributions to ESA, Germany is supporting the science operations and data analysis for Gaia with around 15 million euros, which is about 10 percent of the total. The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) is implementing the German share of the project as part of the national space programme.
