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Gaia
| | | | The mission
| | | | The Flight Control Team
| Dave Milligan is Spacecraft Operations Manager (SOM) for Gaia. He's based at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany.
Credits: ESA-J.Mai/www.juergenmai.com | |  |  | |
| | | | Mission operations overview
| | Artist's impression of Soyuz launch at Europe's Spaceport | | | | |
| | | | | | | | The ground stations
New Norcia, Cebreros
| ESA's new 35-metre deep-space dish antenna, located at Cebreros, near Avila, Spain, is undergoing final acceptance testing.
Credits: European Space Agency/ESA | | | | |
| | | | Ground segment & mission control system
| This mission uses SCOS-2000, the European standard mission control system developed at ESOC.
Credits: ESA | | | | |
| | | | | This block diagram of Gaia's ground segment illustrates the tight integration between scientific data users, the Mission Operations Control Centre (MOCC) at ESOC, the Science Operations Centre (SOC) at ESAC, and industrial support.
Credits: ESA | | | | |
| | | | | Artist's impression of the Gaia spacecraft. Several components are made transparent to reveal other sections.
The payload module with the ~3m diameter hexagonal optical bench is depicted in blue. It rests on the electrical service module, which is the 12-sided yellow structure in the lower half of the image. The electrical service module houses the two star trackers (bright yellow at lower right), the communication subsystem, central computer and data handling subsystem, and the power subsystem (all in purple). In the centre of the electrical service module are the bipropellant tanks, micropropulsion tanks and pressurant tank (all in orange).
Resting on top of the electrical service module and covering the payload module is the thermal tent, depicted here transparent in light brown. On the flat top of the thermal tent is the low gain antenna (purple).
The unfolded sunshield is the transparent grey platform in the lower part of the image. Attached to the outside of the flat and uniform deployable sunshield are 6 solar panels, which can also be seen in this view.
Credits: ESA/AOES Medialab | | | | |
| | | | Last update: 24 October 2011 | |
| | More information Gaia overviewGaia in-depthGaia on ESA RSSD site Images, animations Ground stations New Norcia - DSA 1Cebreros - DSA 2Launch vehicle Soyuz Related video Related What are Lagrange points?L2, the second Lagrangian PointLagrangian (Wikipedia)
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