Farewell to Gaia

A rendering of the Gaia telescope in space. After more than a decade of mapping the stars, the European spacecraft was shut down on March 27, 2025. But its legacy lives on. — S. Brunier/The New York Times

FROM ancient star streams to the innards of white dwarfs, the Gaia space telescope has seen it all.

In late March, mission specialists at the European Space Agency sent Gaia, which is low on fuel, into orbit around the sun, and switched it off after more than a decade of service to the world’s astronomers. They also overwrote some of Gaia’s onboard memory with the names of team members, some of whom wrote personal goodbyes.