The European Space Agency has brought an end to its successful mission with the Gaia space telescope. Low on fuel and nearing the end of its service life, the agency has placed Gaia into a temporary orbit around the sun, effectively ending its 9-year-and-4-month run. Before shutting down, the team overwrote some of Gaia’s memory with personal messages from team members.
Launched in 2014, Gaia has revolutionized our understanding of the universe by creating an exhaustive catalog of celestial objects within the Milky Way and beyond. The observatory has tracked nearly two billion stars, millions of galaxies, and thousands of asteroids, resulting in over 13,000 research studies by astronomers worldwide.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/science/gaia-milky-way-spacecraft-retires.html