The European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia telescope is on a mission to map a billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy.
Space is a harsh environment, even for the most advanced spacecraft. The European Space Agency’s Gaia telescope—on a mission to map a billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy—recently encountered some significant operational hurdles.This could threaten the space telescope performance, which has been reportedly built at the cost of over $800 million.was recently struck by a high-speed micrometeoroid and the strongest solar storm in 20 years.
Usually, these tiny rocks aren’t a problem. But this time, one came in quickly and hit at just the wrong angle. While engineers were dealing with the micrometeoroid issue, another issue surfaced. Gaia’s strong billion-pixel camera uses charge-coupled devices , which are unique light detectors.The ESA engineers noticed one of Gaia’s 106 CCDs had malfunctioned. Each CCD is designed for a particular task, and the broken one affects the sensor’s capacity to confirm star detection.
The exact cause of the CCD’s electronic failure is unclear, but it coincided with a severe solar storm that caused auroral light displays across some parts of the globe.
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