The GaiaNIR mission and the engagement of the Spanish Community

The Gaia Barcelona group as coordinators of the Spanish Network of Gaia (REG) organised the meeting “The GaiaNIR mission and the engagement of the Spanish Community” that took place at the Spanish Space Agency (AEE) in Sevilla, fro, 28th to 30th of January 2026.

The proposal of a new astrometric space mission, GaiaNIR, was submitted to ESA in response to the call for Voyage 2050 and was recommended by the Senior Committee. Built on the Gaia principles, GaiaNIR is an astrometric mission in the near IR, candidate for the ESA Voyage 2050 L5 launch slot. The main goals are to explore the previously inaccessible components of the Galaxy, obscured by dust, in the near-IR and to achieve a significant improvement in parallaxes and, most importantly, in proper motions by combining Gaia’s epochs with new observations over a 20-year period. Improved astrometry allows to enlarge the original Gaia science cases, from the details of the dusty spiral arms to exoplanets in dusty and star forming regions to IMBH embedded in clusters or wide binaries. Finally, this will ensure a revision of the Gaia reference frame.

The Spanish industry and scientific community, fully involved in the Gaia mission, joined in this meeting to discuss the technical and scientific challenges of GaiaNIR.

More details at https://indico.icc.ub.edu/e/GaiaNIRSevilla