The final messages sent to Gaia will continue to be carried out into space as the observatory sleeps, and as data from it continues to contribute to astronomy.

Europe's star-mapping Gaia space observatory has entered its retirement orbit, after gathering valuable cosmic data for more than a decade.

PARIS, France — Europe's Gaia space telescope was powered down and sent into "retirement" on Thursday after a decade revealing the secrets of the Milky Way, but its observations will fuel ...

From its station in a quiescent region of deep space more than 1.6 million kilometers from Earth, Gaia’s mission was, in essence, quite simple: it was designed to give us a better sense of where ...

After more than a decade of mapping billions of stars across the Milky Way and beyond, a groundbreaking spacecraft is retiring. The European Space Agency’s space-based observatory known as Gaia ...

ESA/Gaia/DPAC, Stefan Payne-Wardenaar Gaia has transformed the way scientists understand the universe, and its data has become a reference point for many other telescopes on the ground and in space.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has said goodbye to Gaia, its "billion star surveyor." After nearly 11 years of celestial science—twice its planned lifetime—the spacecraft's fuel supplies ...