Exactly one year ago, at 10:12 CET, Soyuz VS06 with Gaia on board took off from Europe's spaceport in French Guiana, ferrying ESA's billion-star surveyor into space. After an exciting year with a successful L2 orbit insertion, a challenging commissioning period and the start of routine operations, Gaia is now scanning the sky, mapping on average 40 million stars a day. On the occasion of the first launch anniversary, six members of the Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC) share their launch and commissioning memories.
more