Observations To Begin After Instrument Testing And Calibration
ESA’s billion-star surveyor Gaia is now in its operational orbit around a gravitationally stable virtual point in space called ‘L2’, 1.5 million km (930,000 miles) from Earth. Gaia has been travelling towards L2 since 19 December, when, just before dawn local time, it was launched from ESA’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.