The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia space telescope has been facing problems since April 2024 due to the impact of a tiny space rock smaller than a sand grain, known as a micrometeoroid.
The protective cover of the space telescope was damaged as the micrometeoroid impacted at a high speed and at the wrong angle.
This damaged protective cover allows stray sunlight, which occasionally disrupts Gaia’s very sensitive sensors.
As a result of stray sunlight, the space telescope has been detecting a huge number of false stars.
It is not possible to repair the space telescope physically as it is located 1.5 million kilometers away at the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2.
However, Gaia’s engineers have been able to reduce the number of false detections significantly by carefully modifying the threshold at which Gaia’s software identifies a faint point of light as a star.
The Gaia space telescope was launched on December 19, 2013, on a mission to map the positions and motions of more than a thousand million stars throughout our Milky Way galaxy and beyond.
The optimal duration of Gaia’s mission was six years. However, the telescope is still alive in the harsh conditions of space.
Via European Space Agency (ESA)
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