Up Late or Live Somewhere Where 4:12AM EST Isn’t Super Early? Watch the ESA’s Gaia Launch Live

Depending on where you live, the ESA’s Gaia spacecraft will launch either at a perfectly reasonable time tomorrow afternoon or at an unacceptably early hour of the morning. If you happen to be in an area where you won’t have to wake up before sunrise, watch Gaia launch live on its mission to create a better map of our galaxy.

Gaia will be sent on its way tomorrow morning at 4:12AM EST with the ESA’s live coverage beginning at 3:50AM EST (8:50AM GMT). Until then, keep yourself occupied with the ESA video explaining how Gaia is going use two telescopes and a camera with almost 1 billion pixels to create a better map of nearby stars than ever before.

(via ESA on Twitter, image via ESA – M. Pédoussaut)

Meanwhile in related links

• NASA, meanwhile, is fixing the ISS’s coolant system with spacewalks
• Here’s what the Earth and the moon looked like to the Juno spacecraft as it flew by
• IRIS also brought us some pretty great images of the sun