this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
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Farewell, Gaia! Spacecraft operations come to an end (www.esa.int)
submitted 5 days ago by neme@lemm.ee to c/esa@feddit.nl
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[–] Buzztiger@feddit.nl 4 points 4 days ago

So Gaia relies on maintaining very accurate pointing at the stars while measuring their position. For this purpose it uses special cold gas (Nitrogen) thrusters with very low flow noise. These cold gas tanks are now empty and Gaia simply cannot continue to operate.