| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
ESA’s Gaia Mission Launches to Map the Milky Way
The Soyuz VS06 with Gaia space observatory lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, 09:12 GMT December 19, 2013. (ESA–S. Corvaja)
Early this morning, at 09:12 UTC, the dark pre-dawn sky above the coastal town of Kourou, French Guiana was brilliantly sliced by the fiery exhaust of a Soyuz VS06, which ferried ESA’s “billion-star surveyor” Gaia into space to begin its five-year mission to map the Milky Way.
Ten minutes after launch, after separation of the first three stages, the Fregat upper stage ignited, successfully delivering Gaia into a temporary parking orbit at an altitude of 175 km (108 miles). A second firing of the Fregat 11 minutes later took Gaia into its transfer orbit, followed by separation from the upper stage 42 minutes after liftoff. 46 minutes later Gaia’s sunshield was deployed, and the spacecraft is now cruising towards its target orbit around L2, a gravitationally-stable point in space located 1.5 million km (932,000 miles) away in the “shadow” of the Earth.
Watch a video of the launch below:
(…)
Read the rest of ESA’s Gaia Mission Launches to Map the Milky Way (420 words)
© Jason Major for Universe Today, 2013. |
Permalink |
No comment |
Post tags: esa, Gaia, Launch, milky way, mission, Soyuz, spaceflight, stars
Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh
Source: http://www.universetoday.com/107357/esas-gaia-mission-launches-to-map-the-milky-way/
