{"id":29918,"date":"2025-03-28T03:02:53","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T21:32:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=29918"},"modified":"2025-04-09T11:54:33","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T06:24:33","slug":"gaia-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/gaia-mission\/","title":{"rendered":"Gaia Mission"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Gaia Mission Latest News<\/h2>\n<p>On March 27, 2025, ESA confirmed that the space observatory mission, Gaia was &#8220;passivated&#8221; (drained of energy) and placed into a safe &#8220;retirement orbit&#8221; around the Sun.<\/p>\n<h2>About the Gaia Mission<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Full Name<\/strong>: Originally named <strong>Global Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics (GAIA)<\/strong>, later simplified to <strong>Gaia<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Launched in <strong>2013<\/strong> by the <strong>European Space Agency (ESA)<\/strong>, it aimed to create the <strong>most precise 3D map of the Milky Way<\/strong> through <strong>astrometry<\/strong> (measuring positions and movements of celestial bodies).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Position<\/strong>: Placed at <strong>Lagrange Point 2 (L2)<\/strong>, <strong>1.5 million km from Earth<\/strong> (behind Earth when viewed from the Sun), ensuring an <strong>unobstructed cosmic view<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Scientific Instruments<\/strong>:\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Twin Telescopes<\/strong>: Captured light from different directions.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Digital Camera<\/strong>: Nearly <strong>1 billion pixels<\/strong>, the <strong>largest ever flown in space<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Three Key Instruments<\/strong>:\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Astrometer<\/strong>: Measures <strong>precise locations<\/strong> of celestial bodies.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Photometer<\/strong>: Determines <strong>brightness and temperature<\/strong> of stars.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Spectrometer<\/strong>: Identifies <strong>chemical composition<\/strong> and <strong>motion<\/strong> of objects.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Key Discoveries of Gaia<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Mapping the Milky Way in 3D: The First precise 3D map<\/strong> of the <strong>Milky Way galaxy <\/strong>also helped <strong>understand the shape of the galaxy<\/strong>, including:\n<ul>\n<li>The <strong>central bar and spiral arms<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>A <strong>warped, wobbly disc<\/strong>, likely caused by <strong>past collisions with smaller galaxies<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Ripples in the galaxy<\/strong> from these collisions may have led to the formation of <strong>new stars, including the Sun<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Discovery of New Black Holes: A new class of black holes<\/strong> that are <strong>invisible<\/strong> and <strong>can only be detected by their gravitational effects<\/strong>.\n<ul>\n<li>Discovered <strong>one of the closest black holes to Earth<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Tracking asteroids and space threats: <\/strong>Gaia identified <strong>over 1,50,000 asteroids<\/strong>, tracking their <strong>orbits and potential threats to Earth<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Gaia Mission FAQs<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Q1.<\/strong> What is the Gaia Space Telescope?<br \/>\n<strong>Ans.<\/strong> Gaia is a European Space Agency (ESA) mission designed to map the positions, distances, and motions of over a billion stars in the Milky Way.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q2.<\/strong> What is the main objective of the Gaia mission?<br \/>\n<strong>Ans.<\/strong> The mission aims to create a precise 3D map of our galaxy, helping scientists understand its structure, formation, and evolution.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q3 <\/strong>When was the Gaia telescope launched?<br \/>\n<strong>Ans. <\/strong>Gaia was launched on December 19, 2013, aboard a Soyuz rocket from French Guiana.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/explained\/explained-sci-tech\/european-space-agency-retires-gaia-9909159\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">IE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On March 27, 2025, ESA confirmed that the space observatory mission, Gaia was &#8220;passivated&#8221; (drained of energy) and placed into a safe &#8220;retirement orbit&#8221; around the Sun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":29919,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-29918","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}