The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia space probe has delivered its latest collection of data, revealing half a million new stars and providing unprecedented details on the position of more than 150,000 asteroids in our solar system. Gaia, which has been operating 1.5 million kilometers from Earth for a decade, had previously provided detailed information on more than 1.8 billion stars in its third catalog in 2022, providing a complete three-dimensional view of our galaxy.
However, there were areas in the sky densely populated with stars that Gaia had not yet fully explored, called globular clusters. In its latest exploration, Gaia selected the Omega Centauri cluster and discovered more than half a million previously unobserved stars due to their proximity to each other. This information is invaluable to scientists, as globular clusters are some of the oldest objects in the universe and will help confirm the age of our galaxy and locate its center.
In addition, Gaia has pinpointed the position of more than 156,000 asteroids in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, as well as the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. This highly accurate data will improve predictions and probabilities of future approaches or collisions with Earth. The results obtained exceeded scientists’ expectations, demonstrating the continued importance of space missions for our understanding of the universe.