Sydney, Australia (SPX) Mar 26, 2025
China's space station will soon host an unusual biological subject for experimentation: the planarian, a species of flatworm distinguished by its extraordinary regenerative powers, according to a report from China Media Group. With an evolutionary lineage dating back more than 520 million years, planarians are a staple in laboratory research. Their unique ability to completely regenerate b

Paris (AFP) Mar 27, 2025
After more than a decade mapping out our home galaxy, the Gaia space telescope was powered down and sent into "retirement orbit" around the Sun on Thursday, the European Space Agency said. Since launching in 2013, the telescope has been charting the positions, motion and properties of nearly two billion stars to create a vast map of the Milky Way, revealing many secrets of the cosmos along t

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Mar 26, 2025
An international research collaboration, including scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS, has identified a new super-Earth circling a star cooler than the Sun. The planet, named TOI-512 b, was confirmed through precision measurements by ESPRESSO, a spectrograph developed under the leadership of UNIGE. With a density nearly iden

Geneva (AFP) Mar 25, 2025
The United Nations on Tuesday urged countries to boost protections amid a marked increase in efforts to interfere with satellite navigation systems like GPS that are critical for aviation and maritime safety. The UN's International Telecommunication Union, its International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Maritime Organization jointly voiced "grave concern" at growin

Two spacecraft flying as one – that is the goal of European Space Agency’s Proba-3 mission. Earlier this week, the eclipse-maker moved a step closer to achieving that goal, as both spacecraft aligned with the Sun, maintaining their relative position for several hours without any control from the ground.

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From 25 July 2014 to 15 January 2025, the Gaia space observatory performed high-precision measurements of nearly two billion stars from its Lissajous orbit around the L2 Lagrange point, 1.5 million km from Earth. 

After 10.5 years of groundbreaking observations, Gaia’s cold gas supply for attitude control has been depleted. On 27 March 2025, Gaia will leave its Lissajous orbit and transition into a stable heliocentric orbit. Soon after, the spacecraft will be passivated, with its instruments and transmitters switched off. 

While Gaia will no longer collect new data, its scientific mission is far from over! The team continues

Image: Spying a spiral through a cosmic lens (Webb telescope image)

The European Space Agency (ESA) has powered down its Gaia spacecraft after more than a decade spent gathering data that are now being used to unravel the secrets of our home galaxy.

On 27 March 2025, Gaia’s control team at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre carefully switched off the spacecraft’s subsystems and sent it into a ‘retirement orbit’ around the Sun.

Though the spacecraft’s operations are now over, the scientific exploitation of Gaia’s data has just begun.