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Farewell, Gaia Spacecraft operations come to an end
The European Space Agency (ESA) has powered down its Gaia spacecraft after more than a decade spent gathering 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.
They wanted to find a way to prevent Gaia from drifting back towards its former home near the scientifically valuable second Lagrange point(L2) of the Sun-Earth system and minimise any potential interference with other missions in the region. “We had to design a decommissioning strategy that involved systematically picking apart and disabling the layers of redundancy that have safeguarded Gaia for so long, because we don’t want it to reactivate in the future and begin transmitting again if its solar panels find sunlight.” Gaia’s final transmission to ESOC mission control marked the conclusion of an intentional and carefully orchestrated farewell to a spacecraft that has tirelessly mapped the sky for over a decade.
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