Gaia - Mapping a Billion Stars

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hipparcos satellite improved our knowledge of the position and velocity of 120,000 stars by two orders of magnitude in the 1990s and ESA’s Gaia satellite is due to repeat that feat for a billion stars. This is the most exciting of the world’s space science launches in 2013 and it is described by ESA’s Gaia Project Manager, Giuseppe Sarri.