Farewell to Gaia
On March 27, 2025, the Gaia satellite underwent a "passivation" procedure after more than 11 years of dedicated service, a testament to the quality of its design and monitoring by EADS/Astrium (now Airbus Defence and Space) and the European Space Agency. A final manoeuvre successfully adjusted its orbit around the Sun before it was decommissioned.
On this occasion, farewell messages were recorded in Gaia’s "permanent" onboard memory, along with a list of more than 1,400 contributors to the mission.
The artist Joël Schoper from Monthey (Switzerland) created the illustration (see bottom left)
that adorned the Soyuz rocket fairing carrying Gaia: a young girl was wishing a good trip to the spacecraft
as it embarked on its journey. Today, that same child, now a teenager, bids a final farewell to the spacecraft.
For the members of the Gaia consortium, this is by no means the end of this adventure. Many years of work still lie ahead, with significant challenges to tackle. The Gaia team is fully engaged in the era of "data," where processing and analysis play a crucial role in transforming observations into valuable information for the scientific community.
The fourth Data Release (DR4) is scheduled for 2026, followed by DR5 in 2030, if all goes as planned.
Gaia’s "electroencephalogram" and its final moments of activity:
ESA link to
14 Apr 2025