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European Gaia spacecraft is shut down, sent into 'retirement orbit' around the Sun

On March 27, 2025, the ESA's Gaia spacecraft, launched in 2013, was powered down and sent into a 'retirement orbit' around the Sun after more than a decade of charting nearly two billion stars to create an unparalleled map of the Milky Way.
With its fuel reserves dwindling and to prevent interference with other missions, the Gaia team designed a decommissioning strategy to move the spacecraft away from its stable orbit 1.5 million kilometers from Earth at the second Lagrange point .
Gaia tracked 150,000 asteroids, spotted more than 50 dwarf galaxies, detected several dozen black holes, uncovered evidence of galactic mergers, identified vast clusters of stars, helped discover new exoplanets, and mapped millions of galaxies and quasars.
Uwe Lammers, Gaia Mission Manager, stated, "We will never forget Gaia, and Gaia will never forget us," highlighting the mission's profound impact and the emotional connection felt by the team.
Although Gaia itself has now gone silent, its extensive data archive, with future releases planned for 2026 and no earlier than 2030, will continue to fuel scientific discoveries and shape our understanding of the cosmos for decades to come, serving as a reference for future explorers and missions like ESA's Plato.

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Phys.org

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The European Space Agency

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Farewell, Gaia! Spacecraft operations come to an end

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