ESA's Gaia Satellite and data processing status

<!--HTML--><p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia" target="_blank">Gaia</a>, ESA&#39;s astrometric surveyor, was launched on Dec 19th 2013 from Kourou. This exciting mission intends to probe the formation history of our galaxy among other things. We will briefly describe the mission and its goals. An overview of Gaia Data Processing Analysis Consortium and the status of the on ground processing will be provided as this is intimately linked to mission performance and goals. The commissioning phase ended in July 2015, this was longer than planned due to in-flight issues. Now we are well into nominal operations and learning to deal with the Gaia we have (it is a great piece of hardware). We will share the current status of Gaia at L2 and the current end of mission performance estimates.</p> <H4>About the speaker</H4> <p style="text-align: justify;">Since April 2014 William O&#39;Mullane is head of the Operations Development Division in the Science and&nbsp;Robotic Exploration (SRE) directorate of the the European Space Agency. Based in Madrid, he was Gaia Science Operations Development manager from 2005 to launch in 2013 from when he was Gaia Mission Manager until February 2015. His background is in Computer Science and Astronomy, he edits the Elsevier Journal &quot;Astronomy and Computing&quot;.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Prior to working on Gaia he worked on several ESA science missions in the Netherlands (ESTEC) and on the Spacecraft Operations System (SCOSII) in Germany (ESOC). He has also worked on the Virtual Observatory and Sloan Digitized Sky Survey at the Johns Hopkins in the USA.</p> <hr /> <h5>Data processing/preservation is one of the co-operation areas presently being discussed by CERN and ESA in view of the implementation of the Co-operation Agreement signed by the two Organizations in 2014. For more information please find the <a href="http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ESA_and_CERN_sign_cooperation_agreement" target="_blank">ESA</a> and <a href="http://press.web.cern.ch/press-releases/2014/03/cern-and-esa-sign-cooperation-agreement" target="_blank">CERN</a> press releases</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>