Description
This presentation will provide a brief update on the ESA Gaia mission status, reflecting that whilst inflight operations ceased with the recent (27 March 2025) 'passivation', the mission continues with current activity focused on the generation of Gaia Data Release 4 (Gaia DR4) scheduled for later in 2026.
Gaia DR4 will see a significant number of new data products being made available to the community, essentially full epoch astrometry, (speoctro)photometry, spectroscopy and derived products (e.g. astrophysical parameters) for all processed sources, some 2.7 billion in total.
I will discuss the contents of Gaia DR4 and give a look ahead to Gaia Data Release 5. The presentation will also cover a number of recent mission highlights and key science results, noting the contribution of the Gaia UK team and wider UK research community.
