Gaia telescope retires: Scientists bid farewell to 'the discovery machine of the decade' that mapped 2 billion Milky Way stars

An illustration of the Gaia space telescope with the Milky Way in the background.

On March 27, scientists bid farewell to the Gaia telescope, bringing to a close its groundbreaking 11-year mission of mapping the Milky Way and our cosmic neighborhood.

Though not as famous as some of its peers like the Hubble or James Webb space telescopes, Gaia has reshaped our understanding of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Since 2014, the European Space Agency's (ESA) telescope has meticulously charted the cosmos, creating a vast catalog of nearly 2 billion stars, more than 4 million potential galaxies and around 150,000 asteroids, with moons possibly circling hundreds of them.