The ESA presents the Gaia mission in which participate 30 UB researchers

Equip de la UB que treballa en la missió Gaia.
Equip de la UB que treballa en la missió Gaia.
Research
(23/10/2012)
The Gaia mission begins its countdown. In one year, it will take place the launch of this satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA) that will map more than a thousand million stars throughout our Galaxy with an unparalleled precision, and will test the theories of formation and evolution of our Galaxy. The main object of this mission is to create the most accurate galactic census of the Milky Way.
Equip de la UB que treballa en la missió Gaia.
Equip de la UB que treballa en la missió Gaia.
Research
23/10/2012
The Gaia mission begins its countdown. In one year, it will take place the launch of this satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA) that will map more than a thousand million stars throughout our Galaxy with an unparalleled precision, and will test the theories of formation and evolution of our Galaxy. The main object of this mission is to create the most accurate galactic census of the Milky Way.
More than 400 scientists collaborate in this project, and thirty researchers and technicians from the Department of Astronomy and Meteorology of the University of Barcelona have performed a really important role in the conception and design of the instrument and in processing and simulating the missionʼs data.
 
Today, 23rd October, the European Space Agency, in the main office of the European Space Astronomy Center (ESAC) in Madrid, presented the Spanish participation in the mission. The UB professor Jordi Torra, the main researcher of the Spanish contribution to the mission, took part in the presentation. Other professionals also participated: Álvaro Giménez, director of Science and Robotic Exploration of ESA and head of ESAC; José Hernández, Gaia Operation and Calibration Engineer (ESA); Pilar Román, in charge of the ESA Scientific Programme; and César Ramos, general manager of TEDAE, one of the enterprises which takes part in the project.
 
Gaia mission
Gaia will conduct a census of a thousand million stars in our Galaxy, monitoring each of its target stars about 70 times over a five-year period. It will precisely chart their positions, distances, movements, and changes in brightness. The launch of the satellite, currently on trial, will take place at the end of 2013, on a Soyuz-Fregat rocket.
 
During this period of time, it is expected to discover hundreds of thousands of new celestial objects, such as extra-solar planets (around 15000) and failed stars called brown dwarfs. Within our own Solar System, Gaia should also observe hundreds of thousands of asteroids. Gaia instruments are so precise that, if it was on the Earth, it would be able to measure the thumb of a person who is on the Moonʼs surface.
 
The space catalogue
The ESA Gaia mission will generate more than one petabyte of information, in other words, one million giga, which will have to be processed and analysed in order to get results. For this purpose the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC) has been created. This Consortium will be in charge of processing all the raw data from the satellite during the mission, and once finished it will continue its work for three years in order to turn the information into astrophysical data that will be published in different catalogues.
Gaia will allow the knowledge of different parameters (position, speed, distance, physical properties, etc.) for each object, so a map of our Galaxy will be provided.
 
UB participation in GAIA
A team led by the lecturer of the Department of Astronomy and Meteorology of the UB Jordi Torra will be in charge of processing and managing the first scientific data of the satellite. In the University of Barcelona, the lecturer Carme Jordi runs the group involved in the treatment of the photometric data. The person in charge of the simulations is Xavier Luri, lecturer at that UB Department. The mission simulator proves the validity of the scientific answers and the technical approaches of the industry which build the satellite. The simulator makes an intensive use of the Mare Nostrum supercomputer of the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC). The lecturer Francesca Figueras leads the preparation of the scientific exploitation of the data in order to understand the Milky Way. All these researchers are members of the UB Institute of Cosmos Sciences and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia.