Sniff, our most successful scientific Spacecraft by publications. The new Voyage 2050 programme certainly provides science topics that could lead to a worthy successor.
So glad to see that Arianespace is back in business. At least now it is also abundantly clear that Europe needs its own and sovereign access to space.
Glad this worked out, good to have both Launchers back in service. We need independent access to space for Europe.
Yes, not really the complete picture of what happened.
Would have there been actual damage to the system or even destruction if the software did not shut down? Or was the temperature threshold set too conservative? Did the thermal simulations not match the observed temperatures and if so why?
What's the solution to this problem now for the next flight?
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So Gaia relies on maintaining very accurate pointing at the stars while measuring their position. For this purpose it uses special cold gas (Nitrogen) thrusters with very low flow noise. These cold gas tanks are now empty and Gaia simply cannot continue to operate.