The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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A virtual flight that takes the viewer from the Solar System through our Milky Way Galaxy. The journey starts by looking back at the Sun, moving away and travelling between the stars.
The animation is based on data from the second release of Gaia’s satellite, specifically on the 3D position of nearly 97 million stars, the majority of which have the most accurate parallax measurements in the dataset. Accurate parallaxes can be used to directly estimate distances to individual stars.
Acknowledgement: Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC); Gaia Sky; S. Jordan / T. Sagristà, Astronomisches Rechen-Institut, Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg, Germany