Gaia Mission

06.02.2025

Gaia Mission

Why in the news?                        

Astronomers have recently discovered a gigantic black hole named Gaia BH3 hiding close to the earth, the third of its kind using the European Space Agency’s Gaia telescope.

About Gaia Mission:

• Gaia, the Global Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics, is a European Space Agency (ESA)’s astronomical observatory mission.
• Its goal is to create the largest, most precise three-dimensional map of the Milky Way by surveying about 1% of the galaxy’s 100 billion stars.
• It was launched in 2013.
• Nestled at the Lagrange Point 2, some 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth, Gaia orbits the sun in sync with our planet.
• It is shielded by Earth from the sun's glare and free from the distorting effects of Earth's atmosphere, which plague ground-based telescopes' observations.
• It scans the whole sky every two months.
• The 2.3 meters Gaia satellite is attached to a 10 meters circular sunshield and is fitted with two telescopes that sit 106 degrees apart.
• Gaia provides unprecedented positional and radial velocity measurements with the accuracies needed to produce a stereoscopic and kinematic census of about one billion stars in our Galaxy.
• Gaia also maps Solar System objects, primarily main belt asteroids circling the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
• With its ability to detect faint and fast-moving objects, it is expected that Gaia will also detect several thousand Near-Earth Objects (NEOs).

                                                                Source: The Hindu

Consider the following statements regarding the Gaia Mission, recently seen in the news:

Statement-I: It is NASA’s astronomical observatory mission.

Statement-II: It aims to create the largest, most precise three-dimensional map of the Milky Way galaxy.

Which one of the following is correct in respect of the above statements?

A.Both Statement-I and Statement-II are correct, and Statement-II is the correct explanation for Statement-I.

B.Both Statement-I and Statement-II are correct, and Statement-II is not the correct explanation for Statement-I.

C.Statement-I is correct, but Statement-II is incorrect.

D.Statement-I is incorrect, but Statement-II is correct.

Answer D