Saying Farewell to the Spacecraft That Mapped the Milky Way

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  For Scientific American Science quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman.

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  You've probably heard of space telescopes like Hubble and the James Webb.

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  They're famous

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  for giving us breathtaking images of the cosmos and providing countless people around the world with very pretty phone backgrounds.

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  But meanwhile,

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  a spacecraft you probably haven't heard of has been busy shaping our understanding of the universe in a quieter,

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  less glamorous way.

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  My guest today is Lee Billings, a senior editor covering space and physics for Scientific American.

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  He's here to tell us why the European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft is so important and why,

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  even though the Gaia mission is technically coming to a close,

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  its scientific legacy is only just beginning.

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  Lee, thanks so much for joining me today.

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  Rachel, it is my great pleasure once again.

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  So my understanding is that you're here today to tell us about the end of a mission

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  that most of us don't even know how much we're going to miss. What is Gaia to start us off?

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  That's right.

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  So Gaia is a spacecraft that was launched by the European Space Agency way back in December of 2013,

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  and it was on a mission to create the best, biggest, most accurate map of the Milky Way ever.

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  And it recently stopped taking science data as of January 15th.

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  And so I'm here to celebrate Gaia and tell you why Gaia is so cool and why,

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