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
Go to topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
This video shows the huge progress that has been made by measuring ~60 000 reflectance spectra (colour and composition) of Solar System asteroids in Gaia’s data release 3, as compared to 6 000 spectra previously obtained for 4 500 asteroids.
This marks a breakthrough in the analysis of the chemical composition of asteroids, which – together with their orbits – gives precious information about their origin and classification.
Access the related broadcast quality video material
Acknowledgement:
Video: Stefan Jordan, Toni Sagristà, Marco Delbo, Laurent Gallucio, Paolo Tanga, Tineke Roegiers
Artist's rendering of Rosetta: ESA/ATG medialab, CC BY-SA 2.0
Language editing: Paul and Louise McMillan
Narrator: Louise McMillan
Gaia DR3 data used for making this video are available at the following link: https://www.archives.esac.esa.int/gaia
The video was created with Gaia Sky, developed by Toni Sagristà
Gaia Sky can be downloaded from: www.zah.uni-heidelberg.de/gaia/outreach/gaiasky