{"id":818,"date":"2013-10-29T14:00:12","date_gmt":"2013-10-29T13:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gaia.ub.edu\/?p=818"},"modified":"2013-12-13T18:14:56","modified_gmt":"2013-12-13T17:14:56","slug":"gaia-launch-date","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gaia.ub.edu\/?p=818","title":{"rendered":"Gaia launch date"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #0078bd;\">Gaia the astrometry mission, sixth corner stone of the scientific programme of the European Space Agency including the missions Rosetta, Herschel, Planck, Lisa and BepiColombo, finally has a launch date:<\/span> <strong><span style=\"color: #0078bd;\">December 19<\/span><\/strong>.<\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Gaia, which was first proposed in 1993, is expected to be launched on board a Soyuz rocket\u00a0 from the <em>Centre Spatial Guyanais<\/em> (CSG) in French Guiana in South America, to begin its mission to map more than one billion stars, creating an astronomical census and map to help scientists chart the evolution of the Milky Way galaxy. The Soyuz 2-1b rocket will use a Fregat upper stage. Arianespace will oversee the launch. It will be operated in a Lissajous orbit around the Sun\u2013Earth L<sub>2<\/sub> Lagrangian point for about 5 years.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<table class=\" aligncenter\" width=\"453\" cellspacing=\"3\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<th colspan=\"2\"><center><strong><span style=\"color: #0078bd;\">General aspects<\/span><\/strong><\/center><\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th scope=\"row\"><strong><span style=\"color: #0078bd;\">Organization<\/span><\/strong><\/th>\n<td>\u00a0European Space Agency<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th scope=\"row\"><strong><span style=\"color: #0078bd;\">Major contractors<\/span><\/strong><\/th>\n<td>\u00a0EADS Astrium, e2v Technologies<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th scope=\"row\"><strong><span style=\"color: #0078bd;\">Launch date<\/span><\/strong><\/th>\n<td>\u00a019 December 2013. 09:12:18 GMT (10:12:18am EST)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th scope=\"row\"><strong><span style=\"color: #0078bd;\">Launched from<\/span><\/strong><\/th>\n<td>\u00a0Kourou, French Guiana<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th scope=\"row\"><strong><span style=\"color: #0078bd;\">Launch vehicle<\/span><\/strong><\/th>\n<td>\u00a0Soyuz ST-B<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th scope=\"row\"><span style=\"color: #0078bd;\">Mission length<\/span><\/th>\n<td>\u00a05+1 years<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th scope=\"row\"><span style=\"color: #0078bd;\">Mass<\/span><\/th>\n<td>\u00a02030 kg<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th scope=\"row\"><span style=\"color: #0078bd;\">Type of orbit<\/span><\/th>\n<td>\u00a0Lissajous orbit around Sun\u2013Earth L<sub>2<\/sub><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th scope=\"row\"><span style=\"color: #0078bd;\">Wavelength<\/span><\/th>\n<td>\u00a0Optical<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th scope=\"row\"><span style=\"color: #0078bd;\">Diameter<\/span><\/th>\n<td>\u00a0~11m after deployment of a roughly circular sunshade disc\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <sup id=\"cite_ref-Gaia_1-3\"><\/sup><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th scope=\"row\"><span style=\"color: #0078bd;\">Website<\/span><\/th>\n<td><span style=\"color: #0078bd;\"><a title=\"Gaia Overview\" href=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/Our_Activities\/Space_Science\/Gaia_overview\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color: #0078bd;\">\u00a0Gaia ESA page<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Gaia the astrometry mission, sixth corner stone of the scientific programme of the European Space Agency including the missions Rosetta, Herschel, Planck, Lisa and BepiColombo, finally has a launch date: December 19. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Gaia, which was first proposed in 1993, is expected to be launched on board a Soyuz rocket\u00a0 from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1743,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaia.ub.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaia.ub.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaia.ub.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaia.ub.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaia.ub.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=818"}],"version-history":[{"count":45,"href":"https:\/\/gaia.ub.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3578,"href":"https:\/\/gaia.ub.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions\/3578"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaia.ub.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaia.ub.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaia.ub.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaia.ub.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}