![]() ![]() ![]() During these eclipses, part of the sunlight would be blocked from reaching the solar panels causing Gaia power down. ![]() Without any measures taken to change its orbit, the Gaia space observatory would have moved into the Earth's shadow in August and November this year. The Earth shadow is visible near the end of the video and the Whitehead Eclipse Avoidance Manoeuvre performed on 16 July 2019 is meant to keep Gaia out of this shadow for the coming years in mission extension. Gaia's launch to orbit showing its location in space with respect to Sun and Earth. The region around L2 is a special area where the spacecraft can be maintained at roughly a constant distance from the Earth at the cost of small and infrequent orbit manoeuvres. Moving together with Earth about the Sun at about 1.5 million km from Earth, the spacecraft keeps the Sun, Earth, and Moon all in one direction and can thus observe the rest of the sky freely. The second Lagrange point - L2 - is a fabulous place to do science. The Whitehead Eclipse Avoidance Manoeuvre was started yesterday morning by firing the thrusters of the spacecraft through commands sent up to the spacecraft by the Gaia mission flight control team from the ESA mission operations centre ESOC in Darmstadt, Germany. Image credit: Gaia's biggest operation since launch was successfully completed, moving the Gaia mission from its nominal phase into its first mission extension. Whitehead Eclipse Avoidance Manoeuvre marks Gaia's start of mission extensionįigure 1: Part of the Gaia team at ESOC after succesfully finishing the first manoeuvre leg. ![]()
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