Gaia: Ten Years of Surveying the Milky Way and Beyond

TL;DR

The Gaia mission has completed a decade of surveying the Milky Way, providing extensive astrometric data, with upcoming data releases and future missions promising new scientific insights into our galaxy and beyond.

Contribution

This paper offers an overview of Gaia's decade-long survey, summarizes recent results, and discusses future data releases and the next-generation GaiaNIR mission.

Findings

Gaia collected data for 2.5 billion sources.

Upcoming Gaia DR4 and DR5 will expand scientific opportunities.

GaiaNIR will survey the galaxy in infrared, revealing hidden regions.

Abstract

On January 15 2025, the Gaia mission completed the collection of the astrometric, photometric, and spectroscopic data for about 2.5 billion celestial sources, from the solar system to the Milky Way to the distant universe. Work is ongoing to produce Gaia DR4 based on the first 5.5 years of data, with the release expected in 2026. The full 10.5 year survey will be turned into Giaa DR5 which will open up scientific possibilities beyond Gaia DR4}. In this contribution I give a brief overview of the Gaia mission, summarize results from the GaiaUnlimited project, provide a glimpse of what is to come in Gaia DR4, and summarize the new science opportunities that Gaia DR5 will bring. I close with a look ahead at the successor to Gaia, the GaiaNIR mission, which will survey the Milky Way in the infrared, thus probing the Galactic ecosystem in the regions hidden to the Gaia mission.