Europe launches satellite to map 1 billion stars
PUBLISHED: December 19, 2013 at 4:58 a.m. | UPDATED: June 17, 2021 at 8:11 a.m.
BERLIN (AP) – The European Space Agency has launched a satellite that it hopes will produce the most accurate three-dimensional map of our part of the Milky Way galaxy.
The agency says its Gaia satellite was lifted into space aboard a Russian-made Soyuz carrier system from French Guiana at 6:12 a.m. (0912 GMT; 4:12 a.m. EST) Thursday.
Gaia is heading to a stable orbit called the Lagrange 2 point where Earth will shield it from the Sun.
Once it arrives, the satellite will begin its mission to survey some 1 billion stars in Earth's galactic neighborhood.
Gaia will also use its 1,000-megapixel camera to hunt for planets, asteroids and comets beyond our Solar System, and test a key part of Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.
http://www.esa.int/gaia