ESA’s Gaia Spacecraft Officially Decommissioned After 12 Years of Milky Way Mapping

The groundbreaking mission to create a 3D map of the galaxy ends, but its vast data archive will fuel astronomical discoveries for decades.

The European Space Agency powered down the Gaia spacecraft on March 27, 2025, and moved it to a stable retirement orbit around the Sun.
Launched in 2013 with a planned five-year mission, Gaia operated for over a decade, mapping nearly two billion stars and uncovering insights into the Milky Way's structure and evolution.
The decommissioning process involved carefully disabling redundant systems to ensure the spacecraft remains non-operational and does not interfere with other missions near the L2 orbit.
Gaia’s data archive, including upcoming releases in 2026 and 2030, will continue to support research on galactic mergers, exoplanets, black holes, and more.
As a symbolic farewell, the names of 1,500 team members and personal messages were written into Gaia's onboard memory before its systems were shut down.