ESA Awards Gaia Construction Contract
Posted on: Monday, 15 May 2006, 15:03 CDT
The European Space Agency has awarded spacecraft manufacturer EADS Astrium a $406 million contract to develop and build the Gaia satellite.
The goal of the Gaia space mission, scheduled for a 2011 launch, will be to make the largest, most precise map of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Gaia is expected to be the most accurate optical astronomy satellite ever built. It will continuously scan the sky for at least five years from a point in space known as the second Lagrangian point, commonly referred to as L2, about 992,000 miles from Earth, in the direction opposite to the sun. L2 offers a very stable thermal environment, a low radiation environment, and excellent observing efficiency since the sun, Earth and moon are behind the instrument's field of view.
The satellite will determine the position, color and motion of 1 billion stars and also identify as many as 10 000 planets around other stars, discovering several tens of thousands of new bodies -- comets and asteroids -- in the solar system.
Source: United Press International
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