Space telescope Gaia 'retired'

PARIS:

Europe's Gaia space telescope was powered down and sent into "retirement" on Thursday after a decade revealing the secrets of the Milky Way, but its observations will fuel discoveries for decades to come.

Since launching in 2013, the telescope has been charting the positions, motion and properties of nearly two billion stars to create an unparalleled map of our home galaxy, according to the European Space Agency.

Gaia has been peering into the universe from a stable orbit 1.5 million kilometres (930,000 miles) from Earth called the second Lagrange point.

But the neighbourhood has been getting more crowded with the recent arrivals of the powerful James Webb and Euclid space telescopes.

To avoid causing any problems for the new kids on the block, the ESA's team on the ground ordered Gaia's engines to give a final push on Thursday that will take the spacecraft into a distant orbit around the Sun.

This "retirement orbit" will make sure the spacecraft will remain at least 10 million kilometres from Earth for the next century.