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The space adventure > GAIA

THE TELESCOPE ASTROMETRIC GAIA


Credit ESA

Between 2014 and 2020 or 2025, the astrometric and photometric telescope Gaia, placed at the Lagrange point L2 of the Earth is observing a billion stars (down to magnitude 20). Among the stars, a million objects are asteroids in the solar system.

GAIA will make a big jump in our knowledge of asteroids in addition to detection of more than 800,000 new bodies. The orbits of the observed bodies of the solar system will be perfectly known and predictions of a collision with the Earth predictable for one century.