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.

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

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.

The high-performance computing (HPC) environment will be available for scientific research and technological development activities, supporting all ESA programmes as well as the researchers and small- and medium-enterprises from Member States.

Aside from sunlight, the Sun sends out a gusty stream of particles called the solar wind. The ESA-led Solar Orbiter mission is the first to capture on camera this wind flying out from the Sun in a twisting, whirling motion. The solar wind particles spiral outwards as if caught in a cyclone that extends millions of kilometres from the Sun.

Solar wind rains down on Earth's atmosphere constantly, but the intensity of this rain depends on solar activity. More than just a space phenomenon, solar wind can disrupt our telecommunication and navigation systems.

Solar Orbiter is on a mission to