GAIA: Composition, formation and evolution of the Galaxy
GAIA: Composition, formation and evolution of the Galaxy
The GAIA astrometric mission has recently been approved as one of the next two `cornerstones' of ESA's science programme, with a launch date target of not later than mid-2012. GAIA will provide positional and radial velocity measurements with the accuracies needed to produce a stereoscopic and kinematic census of about …